Making numbers count The art and science of communicating numbers

Chip Heath

Book - 2022

Understanding numbers is essential -- but humans aren't built to understand them. Chip Heath outlines specific principles that reveal how to translate a number into our brain's language. This book is filled with examples of extreme number makeovers, vivid before-and-after examples that take a dry number and present it in a way that people click in and say "Wow, now I get it!" This book will help math-lovers and math-haters alike translate the numbers that animate our world - allowing us to bring more data, more naturally, into decisions in our schools, our workplaces, and our society.

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Subjects
Genres
Creative nonfiction
Informational works
Published
New York : Avid Reader Press 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Chip Heath (author)
Other Authors
Karla Starr (author)
Edition
First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition
Physical Description
xix, 182 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-174) and index.
ISBN
9781982165444
  • Translate everything, favor user-friendly numbers. Translate everything ; Avoid numbers : perfect translations don't need numbers ; Try focusing on 1 at a time ; Favor user-friendly numbers
  • To help people grasp your numbers, ground them in the familiar, concrete, and human scale. Find your fathom : help people understand through simple, familiar comparisons ; Convert abstract numbers into concrete objects ; Recast your number into different dimensions : try time, space, distance, money, and Pringles ; Human scale : use the Goldilocks principle to make your numbers just right
  • Use emotional numbers (surprising and meaningful) to move people to think and act differently. Florence Nightingale avoids dry statistics by using transferred emotion ; Comparatives, superlatives, and category jumpers ; Emotional amplitude : selecting combos that hit the right notes together ; Make it personal : "This is about you" ; Bring your number into the room with a demonstration ; Avoid numbing by converting your number to a process that unfolds over time ; Offer an encore ; Make people pay attention by crystalizing a pattern, then breaking it
  • Build a scale model. Map the landscape by finding the landmarks ; Build a scale model you can work with ; Epilogue: The value of numbers
  • Appendix: Making your numbers user-friendly.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Stanford business professor Heath (Decisive) and journalist Starr (Can You Learn to Be Lucky?) deliver a mixed collection of tips for making data more easily understood. Based on the premise that human brains can't easily work with large numbers, the authors provide ways to break down, reframe, and convert them into everyday comparisons or analogies. It's helpful, for instance, to use concrete objects as size references ("a deck of cards" sticks with people more than a three-to-four-oz. portion size); to use culturally relevant comparisons (the Covid-19 pandemic's six-foot social distancing guideline is illustrated by a hockey stick in Canada and a surfboard in San Diego); and if something is hard to grasp, to convert it (how long it takes to walk somewhere can be easier to interpret than how far away it is). Though the authors write that their tips are aimed at both "numbers people" and "non numbers people," the text tends to read like a corporate training course, and their somewhat dismissive view of math as incomprehensible and useless in the "real world" will strike many as blatantly wrong. Still, "non numbers" people will find plenty to consider. (Jan.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A unique popular math book. Most writers in this genre proclaim that math is fun or warn that math can fool you, but Heath, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and science writer Starr have another fish to fry. Even though "nobody really understands numbers" and most efforts to talk about them fail, the authors do a good job showing otherwise. In 22 short chapters, they deliver a painless, ingenious education in how to communicate statistics and numbers to people who find them confusing. One of the authors' most striking examples of statistics in action shows that, in one test, 34% of White and 14% of Black job applicants without criminal records received a callback. When applicants revealed a drug felony conviction and prison term, 17% of Whites and 5% of Blacks were called back. It takes a second, write the authors, to realize the real significance of those numbers: White job applicants who have served jail time are more likely to get a job than a Black applicant with a clean record. The nearest star is 4.25 light-years away from Earth, a number comprehensible only to astronomers. As the authors show, comprehension is easier with a picture: "Imagine shrinking the solar system down to the size of a quarter. You leave a quarter at the goalpost of a soccer field and walk toward the goalpost at the other end of the field. When you reach it, drop another quarter to represent the solar system of our nearest neighbor." With comparisons, the more bizarre, the better. That livestock produce 14.5% of global greenhouse gases is a boring statistic. Instead: China and America are No. 1 and No. 2 in gas production. No. 3 is represented by all of the world's cows. Packed with tables, anecdotes, and amusing facts, the narrative makes math accessible. Astute advice for businesspeople and educators. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.