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Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers
A clear, practical guide to turning cold, clinical data into a story - from bestselling business author Chip Heath.
Across industries from business and technology to medicine and sociology, numbers and data are fundamental to the next big idea. In Making Numbers Count, Chip Heath argues that it's crucial for us all to be able to interpret and communicate numbers and stats more effectively so that data comes alive. By combining years of research into making ideas stick with a deep understanding of how the brain really works, Heath has discerned six critical principles that will give anyone the tools to communicate numbers with more transparency and meaning. These ideas - including simplicity, concreteness and familiarity - reveal what's compelling about a number and show how to transform it into its most understandable form. And if we can do this when we're using numbers, Heath tells us, then the idea of data won't drive people to panic. We're not hungry for numbers - there's an unfathomable amount of information being generated each year - but we are starved for meaning. The ability to communicate and understand numbers has never mattered more.
Across industries from business and technology to medicine and sociology, numbers and data are fundamental to the next big idea. In Making Numbers Count, Chip Heath argues that it's crucial for us all to be able to interpret and communicate numbers and stats more effectively so that data comes alive. By combining years of research into making ideas stick with a deep understanding of how the brain really works, Heath has discerned six critical principles that will give anyone the tools to communicate numbers with more transparency and meaning. These ideas - including simplicity, concreteness and familiarity - reveal what's compelling about a number and show how to transform it into its most understandable form. And if we can do this when we're using numbers, Heath tells us, then the idea of data won't drive people to panic. We're not hungry for numbers - there's an unfathomable amount of information being generated each year - but we are starved for meaning. The ability to communicate and understand numbers has never mattered more.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 11, 2022
About the author
Chip Heath
45 books1,352 followersChip Heath is the professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
He received his B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford.
He co-wrote a book titled Switch How to Change Things When Change Is Hard with his brother Dan Heath.
He received his B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford.
He co-wrote a book titled Switch How to Change Things When Change Is Hard with his brother Dan Heath.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 294 reviews
January 14, 2023
This book should be tremendously useful for nerds trying to communicate with the fraction of the population that thinks one third of a pound is smaller than one quarter of a pound (based on a true story). Very clear presentation with tons of before/after examples highlighted in little colored boxes.
The Florence Nightingale example was particularly interesting to me because she was very successful at turning public health evidence into policy change. Usually when people tell that story they rave about her innovative statistical "infographics" but that has always mystified me somewhat. Although I find them brilliant and beautiful, in my experience most people have trouble understanding them. This book doesn't even bother with the graphs at all, illustrating how Nightingale got her point across with carefully crafted phrases. I would say this is both/and not either/or. The raw numbers are necessary, and then--depending on the audience--charts, infographics, catchphrases will all help. It's fair for this book to omit the graphs because they are focused on language. And they do make a point at the end about "Know your audience."
The Florence Nightingale example was particularly interesting to me because she was very successful at turning public health evidence into policy change. Usually when people tell that story they rave about her innovative statistical "infographics" but that has always mystified me somewhat. Although I find them brilliant and beautiful, in my experience most people have trouble understanding them. This book doesn't even bother with the graphs at all, illustrating how Nightingale got her point across with carefully crafted phrases. I would say this is both/and not either/or. The raw numbers are necessary, and then--depending on the audience--charts, infographics, catchphrases will all help. It's fair for this book to omit the graphs because they are focused on language. And they do make a point at the end about "Know your audience."
February 5, 2022
4 stars for the importance and usefulness of the content. Understanding numbers, statistics, and data is essential to being able to engage in productive and make good decisions. This book gives practical advice on how to do just that
2 stars because it felt like a book written to fulfill a publishing contract with a minimum number of words per book. Honestly, this could have been 3-4 short articles I’d blog posts
2 stars because it felt like a book written to fulfill a publishing contract with a minimum number of words per book. Honestly, this could have been 3-4 short articles I’d blog posts
August 27, 2021
I personally have an incorrigible phobia towards Mathematics. This paranoia reached its zenith during my primary and high school days. Prior to the onset of every Mathematics examination, I used to be racked by a blazing bout of fever. The doctor attributed it to an innate psychological dread of numbers. The moment the completion bell sounded, and the answer sheets were collected by the invigilator, I would get back to being as bright as a button! Perhaps if my Mathematics teacher has explained the art behind numbers, in a similar vein as what Chip Heath and Karla Starr do in their arresting book, “Making Numbers Count”, maybe I would have inculcated a love towards the subject.
As the authors point out at the beginning of their wonderfully engaging book, the higher the numbers and their enormity, less the sensitivities associated with them. Termed “psychological numbing”, this phenomenon literally overwhelms a person for whom numbers are what the rays of the sun are to a vampire. This fear of numbers may be overcome, if they are, according to Heath and Starr ‘translated into precisely simplistic terms. Two scientists working for Microsoft, embarked on exactly such a venture. Striving for the better part of a decade, Jake Hofman and Dan Goldstein created the “Perspective Engine.” The Perspective Engine represented a set of tools that would supplement numbers with some contextual phrases.
Consider this example. A minuscule percentage of CEOs employed in Fortune 500 companies are women. This sentence, even though highlighting the massive gender disparity and discrimination in the corporate world does not invest enough perspective in the reader to grasp the ‘gender schism’ in the work force. However, The New York Times in 2018 tried to put this fact into a clearer perspective. “Among Fortune 500 CEOs, there are more men named James than there are women.” Just read this whopping sentence once again, slowly, calmly and coolly. This ingenious example astounds the reader with its implication.
Another technique proffered by Heath and Starr is to take things “1” at a time. Sometimes condensing numbers into their smallest unit would broaden the horizon of absorption. For example, instead of exclaiming that “there are about 400 million civilian owned firearms in the United States”, try recasting the fact thus: “there are about 330 million citizens in the United States, and more than 400 million firearms…or enough for every man, woman, and child to own 1, and still have around 70 million firearms left.” The fact that the US is capable of arming every man, woman and child with a dangerous weapon and still have enough left to arm a population equivalent to 12 Singapores! A fact enough to keep the mind racing on the 2nd Amendment and the need for gun control.
The book is replete with similar easy to remember and implementable examples. The authors urge their readers to adopt a user friendly attitude while explaining facts involving numbers, so that there is no death by data (my own interpretation). Instead of statistically holding forth on the fact that 40% of the adults in the United States do not always wash their hands after a visit to the rest room, just try telling your listeners that 2 out of every 5 people they shake hands with may not have washed their hands in the interval between using the washroom and shaking hands. This will either send your shell shocked listeners making a dash to the nearest pharmacy for a hand sanitizer!
The authors also argue for the principle of ‘scale’ to be kept in mind while grappling with numbers. Instead of waxing eloquent over the geographical size of Ireland by proudly stating that the country possesses an area of approximately 70,000 square kilometers, just state in a very prolix and matter of fact way that Ireland is half the size of New York State (it’s not so big after all, Ireland that is). If you are intending to bring home the devastating impact of the wildfires that ravaged the Australian continent in 2020, you have two options in which to bring home the terrible facts:
“The 2020 Australian wildfires destroyed an estimated 46 million acres, or 186,000 square kilometres”
OR
“The 2020 Australian wildfires destroyed an area: ½ the size of Japan; as large as Syria; 1.5 times larger than the United Kingdom; twice the size of Portugal; the size of Washington State and as large as New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont).
My favourite part of the book is where the authors exhort the employ of “vividity” to breathe life into numbers. They do this with a unique reference to a hummingbird. Hummingbirds are about 3 grams in weight and the birds consume just about 3-7 calories a day. This makes their metabolism almost 50 times faster than any human being. This fact looks jumbled and little bit hard to absorb. So the Heath and Starr reword it this way: “A hummingbird’s metabolism is so fast that, if it were the size of an average adult male, it would need to consume slightly more than a Coke every waking minute – 67 Cokes an hour, for 16 hours a day”. Just dwell on this astonishing fact for a couple of minutes!
“Making Numbers Count” is a joy to read from both a knowledge outlook as well as from the point of view of developing and honing a technique that would be of utilitarian value in unraveling the myth, mysteries and mystique behind numbers that otherwise may read esoteric and sound daunting.
Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is tasked with teaching courses on business strategy and organizations and is a best-selling author of many books, most of which are co-written with his brother Dan. Karla Starr is the recipient of a Best Science/Health award from the Society of Professional Journalists and is a contributor for the O, The Atlantic, Slate, Popular Science, the Guardian and the LA Times. Both these formidable personalities bring to bear their entire gamut of experience and dish out a veritable treat in the form of this book.
Making Numbers Count – Mathematics made memorable!
(Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath & Karla Starr is published by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster and would be available from the 11th of January 2022)
Thank You Net Galley for the Advance Reviewer Copy!!
As the authors point out at the beginning of their wonderfully engaging book, the higher the numbers and their enormity, less the sensitivities associated with them. Termed “psychological numbing”, this phenomenon literally overwhelms a person for whom numbers are what the rays of the sun are to a vampire. This fear of numbers may be overcome, if they are, according to Heath and Starr ‘translated into precisely simplistic terms. Two scientists working for Microsoft, embarked on exactly such a venture. Striving for the better part of a decade, Jake Hofman and Dan Goldstein created the “Perspective Engine.” The Perspective Engine represented a set of tools that would supplement numbers with some contextual phrases.
Consider this example. A minuscule percentage of CEOs employed in Fortune 500 companies are women. This sentence, even though highlighting the massive gender disparity and discrimination in the corporate world does not invest enough perspective in the reader to grasp the ‘gender schism’ in the work force. However, The New York Times in 2018 tried to put this fact into a clearer perspective. “Among Fortune 500 CEOs, there are more men named James than there are women.” Just read this whopping sentence once again, slowly, calmly and coolly. This ingenious example astounds the reader with its implication.
Another technique proffered by Heath and Starr is to take things “1” at a time. Sometimes condensing numbers into their smallest unit would broaden the horizon of absorption. For example, instead of exclaiming that “there are about 400 million civilian owned firearms in the United States”, try recasting the fact thus: “there are about 330 million citizens in the United States, and more than 400 million firearms…or enough for every man, woman, and child to own 1, and still have around 70 million firearms left.” The fact that the US is capable of arming every man, woman and child with a dangerous weapon and still have enough left to arm a population equivalent to 12 Singapores! A fact enough to keep the mind racing on the 2nd Amendment and the need for gun control.
The book is replete with similar easy to remember and implementable examples. The authors urge their readers to adopt a user friendly attitude while explaining facts involving numbers, so that there is no death by data (my own interpretation). Instead of statistically holding forth on the fact that 40% of the adults in the United States do not always wash their hands after a visit to the rest room, just try telling your listeners that 2 out of every 5 people they shake hands with may not have washed their hands in the interval between using the washroom and shaking hands. This will either send your shell shocked listeners making a dash to the nearest pharmacy for a hand sanitizer!
The authors also argue for the principle of ‘scale’ to be kept in mind while grappling with numbers. Instead of waxing eloquent over the geographical size of Ireland by proudly stating that the country possesses an area of approximately 70,000 square kilometers, just state in a very prolix and matter of fact way that Ireland is half the size of New York State (it’s not so big after all, Ireland that is). If you are intending to bring home the devastating impact of the wildfires that ravaged the Australian continent in 2020, you have two options in which to bring home the terrible facts:
“The 2020 Australian wildfires destroyed an estimated 46 million acres, or 186,000 square kilometres”
OR
“The 2020 Australian wildfires destroyed an area: ½ the size of Japan; as large as Syria; 1.5 times larger than the United Kingdom; twice the size of Portugal; the size of Washington State and as large as New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont).
My favourite part of the book is where the authors exhort the employ of “vividity” to breathe life into numbers. They do this with a unique reference to a hummingbird. Hummingbirds are about 3 grams in weight and the birds consume just about 3-7 calories a day. This makes their metabolism almost 50 times faster than any human being. This fact looks jumbled and little bit hard to absorb. So the Heath and Starr reword it this way: “A hummingbird’s metabolism is so fast that, if it were the size of an average adult male, it would need to consume slightly more than a Coke every waking minute – 67 Cokes an hour, for 16 hours a day”. Just dwell on this astonishing fact for a couple of minutes!
“Making Numbers Count” is a joy to read from both a knowledge outlook as well as from the point of view of developing and honing a technique that would be of utilitarian value in unraveling the myth, mysteries and mystique behind numbers that otherwise may read esoteric and sound daunting.
Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is tasked with teaching courses on business strategy and organizations and is a best-selling author of many books, most of which are co-written with his brother Dan. Karla Starr is the recipient of a Best Science/Health award from the Society of Professional Journalists and is a contributor for the O, The Atlantic, Slate, Popular Science, the Guardian and the LA Times. Both these formidable personalities bring to bear their entire gamut of experience and dish out a veritable treat in the form of this book.
Making Numbers Count – Mathematics made memorable!
(Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath & Karla Starr is published by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster and would be available from the 11th of January 2022)
Thank You Net Galley for the Advance Reviewer Copy!!
January 20, 2022
An informative book illustrating how to better communicate numerical data so that it is more meaningful to the recipients.
Very well researched and written with a host of fascinating examples. Really enjoyed it (considering it was a book about numbers).
Very well researched and written with a host of fascinating examples. Really enjoyed it (considering it was a book about numbers).
November 29, 2022
Hmm, where to start ...
1. Like every book of Heaths before, this is a very "murrican" book, which means - yes, you've guessed correctly, treating a reader as an idiot: tons of repetitions and being Cpt. Obvious. If you embrace that convention, it's OK, but if you're not accustomed, it will trigger you.
2. The book is NOT about making sure the numbers truly reflect the data which is behind them, nooooo. It's about making the numbers resonate with the reader - by creating an emotional connection, bringing them closer to concepts already familiar, etc. While that definitely increases the audience engagement (you're more likely to make an impression that STICKS), it doesn't bring you closer to the objective truth - in some cases: quite the contrary.
3. Objectively speaking, the content of this book could be turned into a single (not too long) blog post. No, it doesn't mean that the authors are filling the space with rich rhetoric :) Actually, they bring in example after example, but these are very similar to each other - they don't prove anything, just illustrate the technique for a super dumb reader (who didn't get it after the 10th one ...).
It is nor particularly bad, I really liked some of the examples. And the book was (mercifully) short. But it's hard to recommend it wholeheartedly. 2.7-3.0 stars. It could have been easily 4.5-4.7 as a blog post.
1. Like every book of Heaths before, this is a very "murrican" book, which means - yes, you've guessed correctly, treating a reader as an idiot: tons of repetitions and being Cpt. Obvious. If you embrace that convention, it's OK, but if you're not accustomed, it will trigger you.
2. The book is NOT about making sure the numbers truly reflect the data which is behind them, nooooo. It's about making the numbers resonate with the reader - by creating an emotional connection, bringing them closer to concepts already familiar, etc. While that definitely increases the audience engagement (you're more likely to make an impression that STICKS), it doesn't bring you closer to the objective truth - in some cases: quite the contrary.
3. Objectively speaking, the content of this book could be turned into a single (not too long) blog post. No, it doesn't mean that the authors are filling the space with rich rhetoric :) Actually, they bring in example after example, but these are very similar to each other - they don't prove anything, just illustrate the technique for a super dumb reader (who didn't get it after the 10th one ...).
It is nor particularly bad, I really liked some of the examples. And the book was (mercifully) short. But it's hard to recommend it wholeheartedly. 2.7-3.0 stars. It could have been easily 4.5-4.7 as a blog post.
January 26, 2022
I have read all the Heath brothers books and liked them a lot until this one. It plays fast and loose with statistics. For instance, comparing 34% and 14% callbacks of white and black interviewees was ok. comparing 17% and 8% of white and black interviewees with criminal records was ok. But then comparing the 17% and 14% is not ok as the ae based on different pools.
Taking the 400 million guns in the US and assigning them to the 300 million people in the US is ok, but then taking the "excessive" 100 million and assigning it to each law enforcement and military person makes no sense.
They talk about losing readers by relying too heavily on the mathematical language, but they pull virtually all the early examples from left-leaning politics which will cause many readers to abandon reading. Stay away from politics or choose examples from centrist domains.
I liked the idea of translating some of the math to easier concepts, but suggesting we drop the math and numbers entirely makes the resulting text ambiguous and less useful.
I am disappointed and will not finish this book.
Taking the 400 million guns in the US and assigning them to the 300 million people in the US is ok, but then taking the "excessive" 100 million and assigning it to each law enforcement and military person makes no sense.
They talk about losing readers by relying too heavily on the mathematical language, but they pull virtually all the early examples from left-leaning politics which will cause many readers to abandon reading. Stay away from politics or choose examples from centrist domains.
I liked the idea of translating some of the math to easier concepts, but suggesting we drop the math and numbers entirely makes the resulting text ambiguous and less useful.
I am disappointed and will not finish this book.
January 7, 2023
Menschen ordnen sich ein in Zahlenmenschen und in „nicht-zahlen-Menschen“.
Die Wirklichkeit ist, dass Menschen nur mit kleinen Zahlen bis 3 maximal bis 5 umgehen können, bzw merken können. Je größer die Zahl wird, desto abstrakter wird unsere Vorstellungskraft. Wer weiß schon wieviel 50.000km2 Landfläche oder 1.000.000.000 € sind. Aus diesem Grund empfiehlt der Autor Chip Heath, dass man bei der Zahlenkommunikation Vergleiche anstellt, um die Bedeutung der Zahl zu vereinfachen. Im Buch gibt es sehr viele Beispiele, wie man Sätze visualisieren kann, damit sie jeder versteht.
Die Wirklichkeit ist, dass Menschen nur mit kleinen Zahlen bis 3 maximal bis 5 umgehen können, bzw merken können. Je größer die Zahl wird, desto abstrakter wird unsere Vorstellungskraft. Wer weiß schon wieviel 50.000km2 Landfläche oder 1.000.000.000 € sind. Aus diesem Grund empfiehlt der Autor Chip Heath, dass man bei der Zahlenkommunikation Vergleiche anstellt, um die Bedeutung der Zahl zu vereinfachen. Im Buch gibt es sehr viele Beispiele, wie man Sätze visualisieren kann, damit sie jeder versteht.
January 16, 2022
I have always been a bit of a nerd and frequently find myself wowed (in ways both positive and negative) by the data that I come across while reading about whatever topic I've found myself immersed in at a given moment (i.e. spending a shameful amount of time poring over COVID-related data for the past two years); when talking to family and friends, I often find it difficult to communicate exactly why I'm so slack-jawed over any given statistic that I've stumbled upon while reading. That said, I figured that I would add this book to my TBR shelf for some point in the future, perhaps for a day where I felt frustrated by my inability to clearly communicate some concept or another.
Well, after reading a sample on Kindle, buying it today was a no-brainer. The manner of writing is so accessible, funny, and pragmatic that I ended up blowing through it in a couple of hours, but I still feel like I got my money's worth. Learning different ways to put statistics in context to tell stories and elicit emotions has left me feeling significantly more confident in my ability to understand and express concepts related to numbers that are beyond the scope of my immediate comprehension.
Well, after reading a sample on Kindle, buying it today was a no-brainer. The manner of writing is so accessible, funny, and pragmatic that I ended up blowing through it in a couple of hours, but I still feel like I got my money's worth. Learning different ways to put statistics in context to tell stories and elicit emotions has left me feeling significantly more confident in my ability to understand and express concepts related to numbers that are beyond the scope of my immediate comprehension.
January 25, 2022
Makes numbers fun!
My job requires me to regularly present numbers to large audiences and motivating them to take action. This book has fantastic ideas to make it emotional and fun! Will definitely use tips from here often.
My job requires me to regularly present numbers to large audiences and motivating them to take action. This book has fantastic ideas to make it emotional and fun! Will definitely use tips from here often.
April 13, 2022
I am a fan of Chip Heath's work, so when Netgalley offered his new book, I was happy to get it. Heath has a way of sparking interest in even the most mundane topics, as evidenced in this title, and the fact that I still wanted to read it in my free time. Heath, along with Karla Starr, promotes the idea that context and precise examples can make normally vague or impossibly large numbers concrete and memorable. Using statistics and available research, Heath offers parallel interpretations that prove unforgettable.
An example:
Hummingbirds weigh about 3 grams and consume between 3 and 7 calories a day, making their metabolism nearly 50 times faster than humans.
Stated in a new way:
A hummingbird's metabolism is so fast that, if it were the size of an average adult male, it would need to consume slightly more than a Coke every waking minute—67 Cokes an hour, for 16 hours a day.
I heartily agree, as Heath suggests, that "instead of feeling like we're reading a biology textbook, we're expanding our sense of wonder." This is just one example in what, for me, was a fascinating book.
An example:
Hummingbirds weigh about 3 grams and consume between 3 and 7 calories a day, making their metabolism nearly 50 times faster than humans.
Stated in a new way:
A hummingbird's metabolism is so fast that, if it were the size of an average adult male, it would need to consume slightly more than a Coke every waking minute—67 Cokes an hour, for 16 hours a day.
I heartily agree, as Heath suggests, that "instead of feeling like we're reading a biology textbook, we're expanding our sense of wonder." This is just one example in what, for me, was a fascinating book.
March 16, 2022
أنا من المعجبين بكتب "هيث" ومتابعي إنتاجاته. فكتبه غنية بأفكار جيدة وتستند إلى دراسات قيمة، وتقود إلى تطبيقات نافعة في أبوابها. ويعرض لذلك-عادة- بأسلوب لطيف وبسيط ومميز.
لكنّ هذا الكتاب لم يرق إلى مستوى أي من كتبه السابقة. بل كان دونها على جميع المستويات؛ أفكارًا وأسلوبًا.
الأرقام لغة لا نفهمها بسهولة، لذلك فغالباً ما تغيب متانة الاستدلالات الرقمية في ظلمة قدرتنا المحدودة على استيعاب دلالاتها الدقيقة. ويقدم هذا الكتاب نصائح لترجمة هذه الأرقام إلى لغة أقرب للمتلقين وأكثر أثراً فيهم.
من النصائح المدرجة ما كان بديعاً وعميقاً وعملياً، ومنها ما كان متكلفاً ومكرراً. مادة الكتاب تصلح مقالاً سريعاً من عدة صفحات، لا كتاباً "ممطوط" المادة!
لكنّ هذا الكتاب لم يرق إلى مستوى أي من كتبه السابقة. بل كان دونها على جميع المستويات؛ أفكارًا وأسلوبًا.
الأرقام لغة لا نفهمها بسهولة، لذلك فغالباً ما تغيب متانة الاستدلالات الرقمية في ظلمة قدرتنا المحدودة على استيعاب دلالاتها الدقيقة. ويقدم هذا الكتاب نصائح لترجمة هذه الأرقام إلى لغة أقرب للمتلقين وأكثر أثراً فيهم.
من النصائح المدرجة ما كان بديعاً وعميقاً وعملياً، ومنها ما كان متكلفاً ومكرراً. مادة الكتاب تصلح مقالاً سريعاً من عدة صفحات، لا كتاباً "ممطوط" المادة!
July 18, 2023
„Use your mind's strength as a strength; make your numbers concrete”.
Lasă-ți imaginația să transforme numerele în povești. În istorii personale. În imagini pe care le putem construi cu ușurință în mintea noastră. Găsește mesajul din spatele cifrelor sau procentelor. Ridică, prin cuvintele tale, un pod între abstract și concret.
Cu ce ar putea să rezoneze audiența ta? Ce elemente din rutina oamenilor pot fi valorificate pentru a-i ajuta să înțeleagă importanța unor statistici? Ce impact poate avea asupra lor o frază care începe cu „50% dintre…”? Sau poate că este mai clar dacă alegi să te exprimi prin intermediul numerelor întregi?
Cei doi autori spun că procentele rămân, totuși, o opțiune demnă de luat în considerare, mai ales dacă ai multe numere pe care trebuie să le compari. Însă, ele pierd prin faptul că nu sunt suficient de concrete în transmiterea unui mesaj, ceea ce le face mai greu de procesat de creierul nostru.
În final, ceea ce este important când încerci să dai viață numerelor este să lași bucuria pe care ai avut-o găsind analogia perfectă sau transformând numărul într-o poveste cu sens pentru audiența ta să ajungă la cititor. Vorbește pe înțelesul omului căruia i te adresezi, respectă-i expertiza și surprinde-l cu o narațiune pe care o poate integra cu ușurință în inventarul lui de cunoștințe.
Fă numerele să conteze!
Lasă-ți imaginația să transforme numerele în povești. În istorii personale. În imagini pe care le putem construi cu ușurință în mintea noastră. Găsește mesajul din spatele cifrelor sau procentelor. Ridică, prin cuvintele tale, un pod între abstract și concret.
Cu ce ar putea să rezoneze audiența ta? Ce elemente din rutina oamenilor pot fi valorificate pentru a-i ajuta să înțeleagă importanța unor statistici? Ce impact poate avea asupra lor o frază care începe cu „50% dintre…”? Sau poate că este mai clar dacă alegi să te exprimi prin intermediul numerelor întregi?
Cei doi autori spun că procentele rămân, totuși, o opțiune demnă de luat în considerare, mai ales dacă ai multe numere pe care trebuie să le compari. Însă, ele pierd prin faptul că nu sunt suficient de concrete în transmiterea unui mesaj, ceea ce le face mai greu de procesat de creierul nostru.
În final, ceea ce este important când încerci să dai viață numerelor este să lași bucuria pe care ai avut-o găsind analogia perfectă sau transformând numărul într-o poveste cu sens pentru audiența ta să ajungă la cititor. Vorbește pe înțelesul omului căruia i te adresezi, respectă-i expertiza și surprinde-l cu o narațiune pe care o poate integra cu ușurință în inventarul lui de cunoștințe.
Fă numerele să conteze!
February 22, 2024
I am shocked that I loved this book about numbers. The idea is to show you how to use numbers in a more impactful way. I read this for work because I am the keeper of the numbers, but I don’t always know what to do with them. Every time the authors gave an example (there’s one nearly every page) they would show you how people normally present numbers and then a better way, and every time it was like a magic trick. I went from zoning out the numbers to understanding. It was truly awesome. I’ve noticed myself thinking differently about how I’m using numbers to communicate—focusing more on highlighting the broader goal than just reporting, so the book worked! I’ll keep it handy to refer back to ideas and examples.
December 17, 2023
The layout of this book drives me bonkers. In an early chapter (I’m not sure which one; they’re not numbered) I was reflecting on the research they were describing and I thought, “it’s too bad they’re not citing these studies, I’d love to check them out”.
Then, at the end of the book (after the appendix) is a chapter titled “Endnotes” with numbered endnotes for each interesting study/fact! If they’re numbered here, why aren’t they numbered in the actual text? Or denoted in the text at all, with any symbol that would indicate that there’s more information available elsewhere in the book? What’s worse, they do use asterisks for footnotes a handful of times (mostly to add jokes) so they know how to use them, but they’re used so sparingly that they seem pointless.
The content is interesting (if a bit US-centric) so that’s worth something, but several examples aren’t clear or don’t provide enough context. For example, comparisons of government spending to the equivalent of your paycheque depends significantly on what your pay is, a number the authors don’t provide.
In all, you can probably learn the same information elsewhere with more relevant, accurate, and easier to follow examples.
Then, at the end of the book (after the appendix) is a chapter titled “Endnotes” with numbered endnotes for each interesting study/fact! If they’re numbered here, why aren’t they numbered in the actual text? Or denoted in the text at all, with any symbol that would indicate that there’s more information available elsewhere in the book? What’s worse, they do use asterisks for footnotes a handful of times (mostly to add jokes) so they know how to use them, but they’re used so sparingly that they seem pointless.
The content is interesting (if a bit US-centric) so that’s worth something, but several examples aren’t clear or don’t provide enough context. For example, comparisons of government spending to the equivalent of your paycheque depends significantly on what your pay is, a number the authors don’t provide.
In all, you can probably learn the same information elsewhere with more relevant, accurate, and easier to follow examples.
February 20, 2022
For number people and people who hate numbers but ESPECIALLY for people who write anything anyone will ever read that includes a number (ahem, looking at all the journalist who wrote anything about covid or global warming..ever 👀).
April 23, 2024
Read for class // There was a lot of interesting points here about how to translate numbers and statistics into better numbers or scenarios that are more intuitive to the human brain. If you like that sort of thing or think those skills would be good for your job, I recommend.
May 21, 2022
Very disappointing book and not worth reading. The main premise, that numerical representation is important and can be enhanced, is sound. The entire book, though, consists of one example after another. While a few illustrations are interesting and worthwhile, most examples have little value and some are dubious. The authors provide little meaningful analysis and little depth. I gave the book 1 out of 5 stars. Using the authors’ framework, I wasted 80% of my time devoted to reading this book, I would have been better off drinking a fifth.
February 3, 2022
As a math nerd and accountant, I can attest to the power and allure of numbers. Manipulating numbers is a fun pursuit for me, because the rules are plain and I can take pleasure from finding the patterns and totals in any list of numbers. Life isn't like that- non-numerical information is subjective and subject to all sorts of cognitive biases, to the point that you're never quite sure if you've accounted for everything.
The problem with numbers geeks is that when we try to interpret those numbers for other people. As a tax accountant, I'm always trying to explain the components of each tax return and how the bottom line came about. Our tax code is so complicated that most people don't get it, and very few understand where their tax money goes or what it pays for. When it comes to truly large numbers, in the billions, our brains shut down completely because we just can't place them in the real world, and that's when math becomes almost useless. How big is the national debt and what does it mean? Nobody really understands.
Making Numbers Count is a great little book that tries to bring the art of explaining big numbers into focus. It seems like nobody understands economics or large scale events- not politicians, not "influencers", and not the general public. Only a small number of specialists come close to understanding the important numbers, and they are notoriously bad at communicating. This book tries to fill that gap.
Chip Heath has written some great books about how we think with his brother Dan Heath- The Power of Moments, Decisive, Switch, and Made to Stick, all of which I've read and recommended. He's a business school professor at Stanford and has teamed up with science writer Karla Starr for this book.
Human brains are limited in how much data they can take in and make sense of. Our working memories can only hold about seven numbers at once (hence the phone numbers and zip codes), and after that they forget. No matter how many math classes people take, most of us don't really understand fractions. ( for instance people thought they were being cheated when A&W introduced a 1/3 pound burger to compete with McDonald's quarter pounder.) And once you get past a few digits of a big number people's eyes glaze over and they check out mentally.
The book has 3 basic principles that it proposes:
1- Simpler is better. Round numbers up or down with enthusiasm.
2- Concrete is better. Use whole numbers to describe whole objects. Avoid decimals, fractions or percentages.
3- Defer to expertise on occasion to override 1 and 2. (For instance, when talking to a group of scientists use numbers that they are familiar with.)
I especially agree with number 2. Numbers can be intimidating, and relating them to real things in the real world makes them more user-friendly. Instead of saying the the national debt is $27 Trillion dollars (a number that is too big to have meaning to the average person), say that the national debt is $82,000 for each man, woman, and child to make it more real.
The book encourages you to paint a picture with numbers- instead of a large number in pounds or square miles, compare an item to the size of a grape, deck of cards, familiar landmark like the Empire State Building, the state of Illinois or the country of Switzerland so people can compare and visualize.
For the truly large scale numbers, you can shrink the scale and make it more relatable. Shrink our solar system down to the size of a football field and you see that the scale of the distances for the sun and planets. Shrink the entirety of earth's history into one calendar year, and you can appreciate how only recently humanity came into the picture (New Year's Eve). Shrink the population of the earth to a village of 100 people and you see what the reality is for most of us. Big numbers are intimidating, but familiar things give us the scale we need. The same applies for tiny numbers- you can increase the scale of molecules and bacteria and put them in a recognizable place to make more sense.
Statistics can be very dry and boring. But a good communicator can turn those statistics into something both personal and emotional. Consider- which is more powerful?
1- There is a 20% chance of experiencing a mental illness in a given year, and a 50% chance of being diagnosed with a mental illness in your lifetime.
2- For every 5 people in this room, 1 of you will be diagnosed with a mental illness this year. At some point either you or the person next to you will be diagnosed with a mental illness.
1- Jeff Bezos made $75 Billion in 2020
2- Imagine if you had an extra $25,000 this year. How many weeks would you have to work to make that much? How dramatically would your life change? How many people's lives could you save by paying for the food, rent, or medical bills? $25,000 is about what Bezos made in the time it took you to read this.
This is the challenge for anybody who talks about either politics or economics. How to put numbers into perspective and make better decisions based on data. Our feeble little brains latch onto faulty assumptions and cling to them even when the numbers contradict them. Explaining the impact of things like climate change, fiscal spending policy, or health statistics can have life or death consequences. Getting people to actually understand climate data, death rates, or budget numbers is the big challenge.
This book made me think twice about how I read or write about statistics. Making them personal, relatable, and user-friendly is the whole ballgame. If you can't get a point across, a number just becomes another bit of static in an already confusing world. I close with some of my favorite number paintings from the book- these changed how I see some things and give me a template for how to convert data into stories.
1- If everyone in the world ate as much meat as Americans, we would need 138% more inhabitable land to raise the livestock.
2- If everyone in the world ate as much meat as Americans, all inhabitable land on Earth would have to be used to raise livestock- and we'd still need more- an additional landmass as big as Africa and Australia combined.
1- The odds of winning Powerball are 292.201,338 to 1
2- Imagine having to guess a random date between January 1 of year 001 and September 18th of the year 2667. If you match exactly, you win the lottery prize. But just as you are about to get the prize they reveal one more hurdle- you have to pick from 300 identical envelopes on a wall that has your check. Only that one will have your prize.
1- In a recent study of racism in job applications, 34% of White and 14% of Black applications without criminal records received calls for interviews. For those with criminal records, the numbers were 17% and 5%.
2- White job applicants who had served jail time for a felony were more likely to receive an interview request than were Black applicants with clean records.
1- McDonalds alone outspends the 5 A Day campaign for health eating by 350 to 1.
2- If a child sees a McDonald's commercial every day, it would take them almost a year to see just one commercial about 5 A Day.
1- The US government spent $68 billion on food and nutrition assistance in 2018
2- Imagine that when you start work on January 1, every dime you made goes toward paying your taxes and then you get to keep the money when you're done.
- The first two weeks of January goes to Social Security
- Another two weeks of January goes to Medicare and Medicaid
- The first five days of February pay down interest on the national debt
- Ten more days to pay for national defense
- The next ten days go towards everything else you think of as government- meat inspectors, air traffic controllers, CDC biologists, judges, congress, FBI agents, diplomats etc.
- You spend 6 hours working to pay for food stamps, 12 minutes to pay for the national park system, and 2 hours for NASA.
The problem with numbers geeks is that when we try to interpret those numbers for other people. As a tax accountant, I'm always trying to explain the components of each tax return and how the bottom line came about. Our tax code is so complicated that most people don't get it, and very few understand where their tax money goes or what it pays for. When it comes to truly large numbers, in the billions, our brains shut down completely because we just can't place them in the real world, and that's when math becomes almost useless. How big is the national debt and what does it mean? Nobody really understands.
Making Numbers Count is a great little book that tries to bring the art of explaining big numbers into focus. It seems like nobody understands economics or large scale events- not politicians, not "influencers", and not the general public. Only a small number of specialists come close to understanding the important numbers, and they are notoriously bad at communicating. This book tries to fill that gap.
Chip Heath has written some great books about how we think with his brother Dan Heath- The Power of Moments, Decisive, Switch, and Made to Stick, all of which I've read and recommended. He's a business school professor at Stanford and has teamed up with science writer Karla Starr for this book.
Human brains are limited in how much data they can take in and make sense of. Our working memories can only hold about seven numbers at once (hence the phone numbers and zip codes), and after that they forget. No matter how many math classes people take, most of us don't really understand fractions. ( for instance people thought they were being cheated when A&W introduced a 1/3 pound burger to compete with McDonald's quarter pounder.) And once you get past a few digits of a big number people's eyes glaze over and they check out mentally.
The book has 3 basic principles that it proposes:
1- Simpler is better. Round numbers up or down with enthusiasm.
2- Concrete is better. Use whole numbers to describe whole objects. Avoid decimals, fractions or percentages.
3- Defer to expertise on occasion to override 1 and 2. (For instance, when talking to a group of scientists use numbers that they are familiar with.)
I especially agree with number 2. Numbers can be intimidating, and relating them to real things in the real world makes them more user-friendly. Instead of saying the the national debt is $27 Trillion dollars (a number that is too big to have meaning to the average person), say that the national debt is $82,000 for each man, woman, and child to make it more real.
The book encourages you to paint a picture with numbers- instead of a large number in pounds or square miles, compare an item to the size of a grape, deck of cards, familiar landmark like the Empire State Building, the state of Illinois or the country of Switzerland so people can compare and visualize.
For the truly large scale numbers, you can shrink the scale and make it more relatable. Shrink our solar system down to the size of a football field and you see that the scale of the distances for the sun and planets. Shrink the entirety of earth's history into one calendar year, and you can appreciate how only recently humanity came into the picture (New Year's Eve). Shrink the population of the earth to a village of 100 people and you see what the reality is for most of us. Big numbers are intimidating, but familiar things give us the scale we need. The same applies for tiny numbers- you can increase the scale of molecules and bacteria and put them in a recognizable place to make more sense.
Statistics can be very dry and boring. But a good communicator can turn those statistics into something both personal and emotional. Consider- which is more powerful?
1- There is a 20% chance of experiencing a mental illness in a given year, and a 50% chance of being diagnosed with a mental illness in your lifetime.
2- For every 5 people in this room, 1 of you will be diagnosed with a mental illness this year. At some point either you or the person next to you will be diagnosed with a mental illness.
1- Jeff Bezos made $75 Billion in 2020
2- Imagine if you had an extra $25,000 this year. How many weeks would you have to work to make that much? How dramatically would your life change? How many people's lives could you save by paying for the food, rent, or medical bills? $25,000 is about what Bezos made in the time it took you to read this.
This is the challenge for anybody who talks about either politics or economics. How to put numbers into perspective and make better decisions based on data. Our feeble little brains latch onto faulty assumptions and cling to them even when the numbers contradict them. Explaining the impact of things like climate change, fiscal spending policy, or health statistics can have life or death consequences. Getting people to actually understand climate data, death rates, or budget numbers is the big challenge.
This book made me think twice about how I read or write about statistics. Making them personal, relatable, and user-friendly is the whole ballgame. If you can't get a point across, a number just becomes another bit of static in an already confusing world. I close with some of my favorite number paintings from the book- these changed how I see some things and give me a template for how to convert data into stories.
1- If everyone in the world ate as much meat as Americans, we would need 138% more inhabitable land to raise the livestock.
2- If everyone in the world ate as much meat as Americans, all inhabitable land on Earth would have to be used to raise livestock- and we'd still need more- an additional landmass as big as Africa and Australia combined.
1- The odds of winning Powerball are 292.201,338 to 1
2- Imagine having to guess a random date between January 1 of year 001 and September 18th of the year 2667. If you match exactly, you win the lottery prize. But just as you are about to get the prize they reveal one more hurdle- you have to pick from 300 identical envelopes on a wall that has your check. Only that one will have your prize.
1- In a recent study of racism in job applications, 34% of White and 14% of Black applications without criminal records received calls for interviews. For those with criminal records, the numbers were 17% and 5%.
2- White job applicants who had served jail time for a felony were more likely to receive an interview request than were Black applicants with clean records.
1- McDonalds alone outspends the 5 A Day campaign for health eating by 350 to 1.
2- If a child sees a McDonald's commercial every day, it would take them almost a year to see just one commercial about 5 A Day.
1- The US government spent $68 billion on food and nutrition assistance in 2018
2- Imagine that when you start work on January 1, every dime you made goes toward paying your taxes and then you get to keep the money when you're done.
- The first two weeks of January goes to Social Security
- Another two weeks of January goes to Medicare and Medicaid
- The first five days of February pay down interest on the national debt
- Ten more days to pay for national defense
- The next ten days go towards everything else you think of as government- meat inspectors, air traffic controllers, CDC biologists, judges, congress, FBI agents, diplomats etc.
- You spend 6 hours working to pay for food stamps, 12 minutes to pay for the national park system, and 2 hours for NASA.
March 30, 2022
I didn't finish this. I got to page 45 and started skimming.
The idea is that you have to "translate" statements involving numbers into simpler, more concrete terms in order to get your points across. Fine so far.
Problem #1: A lot of the examples the authors provide take a complicated statement and make it more complicated. Their "simple" comparisons end up sounding like word problems from junior high math classes.
Problem #2: The authors barely acknowledge that different audiences have different points of reference. A statement that makes sense to people who regularly fly between the East and West Coasts of the United States will be meaningless to most readers. Comparing something to the size of Italy isn't going to help a lot of people. How many people can easily visualize a gallon jug or the length of a soccer field? And so on.
I gave up on the book when the authors praised a team of students for "translating" the statement, "CFLs use a quarter of the electricity of standard bulbs and last for 7 years in between replacements with the 'replace every year' cycle for typical bulbs," into the statement, "Replace your lights with CFLs when your child is learning to walk. The next time you'd have to replace the bulb, your child would be in second grade, learning about oxygen. The next time, they'd be taking driver's ed."
"This was one of the few times in a teaching career of over 20 years when Chip heard his students applaud a classmate's answer. He clapped, too."
Right.
The idea is that you have to "translate" statements involving numbers into simpler, more concrete terms in order to get your points across. Fine so far.
Problem #1: A lot of the examples the authors provide take a complicated statement and make it more complicated. Their "simple" comparisons end up sounding like word problems from junior high math classes.
Problem #2: The authors barely acknowledge that different audiences have different points of reference. A statement that makes sense to people who regularly fly between the East and West Coasts of the United States will be meaningless to most readers. Comparing something to the size of Italy isn't going to help a lot of people. How many people can easily visualize a gallon jug or the length of a soccer field? And so on.
I gave up on the book when the authors praised a team of students for "translating" the statement, "CFLs use a quarter of the electricity of standard bulbs and last for 7 years in between replacements with the 'replace every year' cycle for typical bulbs," into the statement, "Replace your lights with CFLs when your child is learning to walk. The next time you'd have to replace the bulb, your child would be in second grade, learning about oxygen. The next time, they'd be taking driver's ed."
"This was one of the few times in a teaching career of over 20 years when Chip heard his students applaud a classmate's answer. He clapped, too."
Right.
October 14, 2021
Received as an ARC from the publisher. Started 10-14-21. Finished it in one sitting. First, it's not very long; second, it's not complicated, and third, it's so much fun to read. How do you communicate numbers? Dry stats just don't cut it. You have to make the numbers relevant, simple and familiar. To say a tumor is 1 centimeter large is not as relevant as saying it's the size of a pea. To comprehend the usable water problems in the world, you'd have to understand that if the world's water was put into a gallon jug, humans would only be able to drink 3 drops of it!!!! Now that's the way to make stats believeable. This book gives many examples of communication with numbers from the immense size of a volcano on Mars to the life span of the earth to Jeff Bezos' billions. A fun read all around. Should be required reading to all math students from middle school on up, no matter what their future profession may be.
July 2, 2022
“A million seconds is 12 days. A billion is 1,000 times greater than 1,000,000. A billion seconds is 32 years.”
Numbers are all around us. Whether you are a space scientist working on the next space mission, a brand manager working on your next product launch, or a social worker working on your next community initiative, the chances of you working with numbers are very high. What's however sad to see is how we still think that only the people working in the finance domain should be good with numbers when as a matter of fact, we all should be mastering numbers.
While the world around us has become more and more data-centric and numbers-driven over the years, our brains haven't evolved at the same scale to effectively translate numbers especially when they are not whole. Therefore, what becomes really important is how to work with numbers using the pre-existing analogies and neural connections in our brains. In 'Making Numbers Count,' the authors - Chip Heath (a Stanford Professor) and Karla Starr (award-winning science/business journalist) - provide valuable frameworks for making your numbers user-friendly and appeal to the emotions of your audience.
From making understandable comparisons to recasting numbers into different dimensions and human scales, the book imparts you the fantastic superpowers to better communicate the numerical data so that it is more meaningful to your end audience. For example, a huge defense budget of 1 billion may not make sense to a reader at such a colossal scale but having the same budget with contribution number at an individual level will not only make it comprehensible but sticky in your brain as well.
Numbers have the magical power to awe us if explained in the right manner. It was fascinating to learn about desert ants' natural GPS system that can beat Google Maps - the ants can wander around a region equivalent to the metro Washington DC area and still return to their homes with an error margin the size of an M &M. Similarly, mapping the universe on a yearly calendar scale wherein the Big Bang took place on January 1 at midnight, and the current time is mapped to December 31 at midnight helps us to comprehend how we humankind are so new and just a recent blip in this long history of the universe.
I'd highly recommend this book to everyone since all of us are surrounded by numbers and the world would be a better place if we could communicate the numbers better and take informed data-backed decisions. Read this if you aspire to be a 'numbers' person and then go amaze your boss and colleagues at your next presentation.
Numbers are all around us. Whether you are a space scientist working on the next space mission, a brand manager working on your next product launch, or a social worker working on your next community initiative, the chances of you working with numbers are very high. What's however sad to see is how we still think that only the people working in the finance domain should be good with numbers when as a matter of fact, we all should be mastering numbers.
While the world around us has become more and more data-centric and numbers-driven over the years, our brains haven't evolved at the same scale to effectively translate numbers especially when they are not whole. Therefore, what becomes really important is how to work with numbers using the pre-existing analogies and neural connections in our brains. In 'Making Numbers Count,' the authors - Chip Heath (a Stanford Professor) and Karla Starr (award-winning science/business journalist) - provide valuable frameworks for making your numbers user-friendly and appeal to the emotions of your audience.
From making understandable comparisons to recasting numbers into different dimensions and human scales, the book imparts you the fantastic superpowers to better communicate the numerical data so that it is more meaningful to your end audience. For example, a huge defense budget of 1 billion may not make sense to a reader at such a colossal scale but having the same budget with contribution number at an individual level will not only make it comprehensible but sticky in your brain as well.
Numbers have the magical power to awe us if explained in the right manner. It was fascinating to learn about desert ants' natural GPS system that can beat Google Maps - the ants can wander around a region equivalent to the metro Washington DC area and still return to their homes with an error margin the size of an M &M. Similarly, mapping the universe on a yearly calendar scale wherein the Big Bang took place on January 1 at midnight, and the current time is mapped to December 31 at midnight helps us to comprehend how we humankind are so new and just a recent blip in this long history of the universe.
I'd highly recommend this book to everyone since all of us are surrounded by numbers and the world would be a better place if we could communicate the numbers better and take informed data-backed decisions. Read this if you aspire to be a 'numbers' person and then go amaze your boss and colleagues at your next presentation.
February 18, 2022
A really good central point and one or two other well-framed points, all backed up with good examples. But the connecting material was verbose. This book probably could have been 20 pages instead of 140.
Gems:
P8 translate numbers to human terms. But don’t settle for good, like comparing to Mt. Everest. Most people haven’t climbed Mt. Everest. Make your comparison something everyone has done.
P34 “A truly interesting stat doesn’t just convey information, it targets what’s counter-intuitive.”
P59 “Big-ism wows our senses, but it doesn’t cultivate understanding.”
P74 Florence Nightingale, a commoner, used vivid stats to reveal how much improvement was needed for medical care of the British military
P76 “The process of producing an emotional number starts by looking, as Nightingale did, for preexisting pools of emotion.”
P91 unfolding stories are even better when people are mentally living out their own story
P96 demos are best used for key points or epiphanies
P110 offer an encore - paint a picture with your numbers, but save some in reserve. Then as the first number is settling in, drop the second.
P134 for every number, there’s some translation that will allow you and others to intuitively understand and feel that number
Gems:
P8 translate numbers to human terms. But don’t settle for good, like comparing to Mt. Everest. Most people haven’t climbed Mt. Everest. Make your comparison something everyone has done.
P34 “A truly interesting stat doesn’t just convey information, it targets what’s counter-intuitive.”
P59 “Big-ism wows our senses, but it doesn’t cultivate understanding.”
P74 Florence Nightingale, a commoner, used vivid stats to reveal how much improvement was needed for medical care of the British military
P76 “The process of producing an emotional number starts by looking, as Nightingale did, for preexisting pools of emotion.”
P91 unfolding stories are even better when people are mentally living out their own story
P96 demos are best used for key points or epiphanies
P110 offer an encore - paint a picture with your numbers, but save some in reserve. Then as the first number is settling in, drop the second.
P134 for every number, there’s some translation that will allow you and others to intuitively understand and feel that number
January 26, 2023
Đây là 1 cuốn sách thú vị và hữu ích khi chỉ cho người đọc cách truyền đạt những con số khô khan thành những vật thể, cách hình dung và câu chuyện ấn tượng bằng rất nhiều ví dụ cụ thể. Sau đây là 1 ví dụ mình rất thích:
- Old: Tỉ lệ rơi máy bay là 1/1.000.0000.
=> Dù xác suất là cực thấp, nhưng cách truyền đạt này vẫn khiến cho không ít người cảm giác số "1" đó vẫn khá lớn và không may mình là 1 trong 1 triệu đó.
- New: Hãy tưởng tượng bạn có 7 cuốn Harry Potter trên giá sách của mình. Sau đó, bạn cất quyền phần 2 - Harry Potter và Phòng chứa bí mật vào túi để mang đến tiệm cafe sách. Trước khi đi, bạn hãy lấy 1 quyển bất kì trong 6 quyển còn lại, lật tới 1 trang bất kì, và đánh dấu vào 1 chữ bất kì trên trang đó. Sau khi bạn đi, 1 người nào khác cũng sẽ đến giá sách với 6 quyển sách đó, lấy 1 quyển bất kì, lật 1 trang bất kì và cũng chọn 1 từ bất kì từ trang đó. Xác xuất để người đó chọn đúng từ mà bạn đã đánh dấu đúng bằng xác xuất mà bạn sẽ chết do máy bay rơi.
Lí do mình cho quyển sách chỉ 4 sao là vì sách viết dài dòng 1 cách không cần thiết. Nếu muốn, tác giả có thể hoàn toàn cắt đi 1 nửa quyển sách nhưng vẫn đảm bảo nội dung.
- Old: Tỉ lệ rơi máy bay là 1/1.000.0000.
=> Dù xác suất là cực thấp, nhưng cách truyền đạt này vẫn khiến cho không ít người cảm giác số "1" đó vẫn khá lớn và không may mình là 1 trong 1 triệu đó.
- New: Hãy tưởng tượng bạn có 7 cuốn Harry Potter trên giá sách của mình. Sau đó, bạn cất quyền phần 2 - Harry Potter và Phòng chứa bí mật vào túi để mang đến tiệm cafe sách. Trước khi đi, bạn hãy lấy 1 quyển bất kì trong 6 quyển còn lại, lật tới 1 trang bất kì, và đánh dấu vào 1 chữ bất kì trên trang đó. Sau khi bạn đi, 1 người nào khác cũng sẽ đến giá sách với 6 quyển sách đó, lấy 1 quyển bất kì, lật 1 trang bất kì và cũng chọn 1 từ bất kì từ trang đó. Xác xuất để người đó chọn đúng từ mà bạn đã đánh dấu đúng bằng xác xuất mà bạn sẽ chết do máy bay rơi.
Lí do mình cho quyển sách chỉ 4 sao là vì sách viết dài dòng 1 cách không cần thiết. Nếu muốn, tác giả có thể hoàn toàn cắt đi 1 nửa quyển sách nhưng vẫn đảm bảo nội dung.
February 1, 2022
Instead of saying...
A single M&M has 4 calories, say...
In order to burn off the calories in a single M&M, you'd have to walk two flights of stairs.
This was an impulse bookstore purchase that was so outside of my typical MG/YA reading life. And, I loved it.
Authors Chip Heath and Karla Starr discuss how to describe numbers that are more understood by all. The book is supported by scientific research and theories and has dozens of side-by-side comparisons to demonstrate each discussion point. We may not be able to truly comprehend Jeff Bezos' wealth or the "true" odds of winning the PowerBall lottery, but with a few tweaks, readers will learn how to better convey numbers. Jeff Bezos earns $25,000 how quickly? Answer: 11 seconds. Eleven dang seconds.
When thinking about application, I think this book would be great for students who are needing to present key data or statistics with a punch, like those preparing for a TED Talk. It is also just a great "random read." Recommended for GR 8 and up.
A single M&M has 4 calories, say...
In order to burn off the calories in a single M&M, you'd have to walk two flights of stairs.
This was an impulse bookstore purchase that was so outside of my typical MG/YA reading life. And, I loved it.
Authors Chip Heath and Karla Starr discuss how to describe numbers that are more understood by all. The book is supported by scientific research and theories and has dozens of side-by-side comparisons to demonstrate each discussion point. We may not be able to truly comprehend Jeff Bezos' wealth or the "true" odds of winning the PowerBall lottery, but with a few tweaks, readers will learn how to better convey numbers. Jeff Bezos earns $25,000 how quickly? Answer: 11 seconds. Eleven dang seconds.
When thinking about application, I think this book would be great for students who are needing to present key data or statistics with a punch, like those preparing for a TED Talk. It is also just a great "random read." Recommended for GR 8 and up.
October 19, 2022
I got to listen to Chip Heath speak about this book and loved it. The book presents many ways to make numbers more tangible/understandable to whatever group you are working with. Loved all the examples. Definitely have shared some with my family and will use lots in my math classes. I loved the idea that really none of us are numbers people-our brains weren't made to grasp really big numbers. But making them simpler and using concrete examples can really help. This is a book I will refer back to for sure.
February 4, 2022
Can your brain understand the difference in magnitude between a million and a billion? Of course not! Both are just “really big”. This book helps anyone who deals with numbers to help convey their true meaning across.
Super approachable, chapters are easy to digest, just overall another great book from Chip Heath!
Super approachable, chapters are easy to digest, just overall another great book from Chip Heath!
August 16, 2022
I think everyone should read the sparknotes of this book. Cool ways of thinking about and communicating anything dealing with numbers. Had an immediate impact on how I talk about numbers in my classroom but is valuable to anyone who works with/communicates numbers.
Three stars because it often felt like it could’ve been a blog post or article but enjoyable read.
Three stars because it often felt like it could’ve been a blog post or article but enjoyable read.
December 5, 2022
It was a wonderful read about how to look at numbers in a different way and also present it in a different way. It is mix of psychology, communication and thought process. It is about how humans perceive numbers and what best can be done to represent them better. The author Chip Heath, like his former books has done a good amount of research in writing this book. Once you read this, you will start to look at the numbers differently. An interesting read overall!
July 7, 2022
This was for a book study course. I was worried it would be boring and a drag to read but instead it was a quick read that was quite interesting! The discussions for the course have been equally as interesting!
November 24, 2022
Loved this book - all about making numbers memorable by converting into bite size portions our minds can comprehend. Also touched on converting important numbers into whatever your audience cares about - def applies to my job and how to creatively convey a figure. Really enjoyed this one.
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