How do you help people understand numbers?
by Paul Prins at 3:46 pm
One of the most often overlooked aspects of any large event is how to adequately communicate the numbers involved in a way our minds can understand. For a long time the thought of a million was so much that it couldn’t be comprehended, and then it was billion, and now with all the talk of trillions related to the bailout it is near impossible to understand what these mean.
Often we create mental images using other things that we can understand. How many times around the world can ____ go is a common one. In reference to the trillion mentioned earlier I read in the BBC a couple weeks back that:
A million seconds is 11 days.
A billion seconds is around 32 years.
And a trillion therefore is 32,000 years.
By far my favorite is when people visualize data graphically. I’m not talking about a pie charts and line graphs (which both have their place) but into innovative and visually striking representations. The steam graph to the right is a great example. This particular graph is visualizing the news from 2008. I think that it’s presentation and visual appearance clearly illustrates my point.
If this has peaked your interests, make sure you check out ‘The first sketches of history.’
If it is helping people to understand the budget of the church, the regular giving, or any number of other administrative details graphing is a vital way to accomplish this.
nod: Ned Wright
Sources: I Shot the Sherrif Graph, niemanlab.org
