“Adding whipped cream to millions of Starbucks Corp. drinks emits 50 times as much greenhouse gas as the company’s private jet.” – Eric Pfanner, Bloomberg News
If you’re going to use numbers to make a point, be sure you’re helping make those numbers make sense. Here are five ways to do it:
1. Do the math, and give numbers context
“Over a period of between 40 and 70 days, a lake formed, growing to more than 0.5 cubic kilometres in volume – as much water as it would take to fill the Houston Astrodome more than 400 times.” – Andrew Findlay in Canadian Geographic
Researcher Jake Hofman says perspective helps people recall unfamiliar numbers, estimate numbers they hadn’t seen before, and detect errors in “potentially manipulated numbers.” Instead of saying “Americans own almost 300 million firearms,” for example, he suggests, “To put this into perspective, 300 million firearms is about 1 firearm for every person in the United States.”
2. Make a large number understandable by comparing it to something known
“The travel and hospitality sector lost almost $4.7 trillion in 2020 – as much as if all 7.9 billion people in the world threw $595 straight into a garbage bin.” – Ann Handley
“To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a refrigerator-sized machine weighing 500 pounds. Today, that same gigabyte’s worth of data resides comfortably on a disk smaller than a coin.” – IBM
3. Make a small number or size understandable by comparing it to something known
“Above all, atoms are tiny – very tiny indeed. Half a million of them lined up shoulder to shoulder could hide behind a human hair.” – Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
“A tiny blackpoll warbler, a bird no heavier than a ballpoint pen, makes an epic journey each year.” – Kenn Kaufman, via ScienceNews
4. Show significance without actual numbers
“[The alligator gar is] a toothy giant that can grow longer than a horse and heavier than a refrigerator.” – Tammy Webber in the Toronto Star
“A new calculation shows that if space is an ocean, we’ve barely dipped in a toe. The volume of observable space combed so far for E.T. is comparable to searching the volume of a large hot tub for evidence of fish in Earth’s oceans.” – Lisa Grossman, ScienceNews
5. Make time relatable
“[Sir Richard Branson’s] round trip, from New Mexico to the stars and back, will last about 90 minutes, or roughly what it takes to drive from Toronto to Niagara Falls.” – Vinay Menon in the Toronto Star
No matter how well you’re able to help readers understand numbers, try to use as few as will get the job done. “Never clot a bunch of numbers in a single paragraph; or worse, three paragraphs,” says Roy Peter Clark. “Readers don’t learn that way.”
Sue Horner loves being the “go-to” writer for small communications teams who need writing that has warmth and personality. A full-time freelance writer, she launched Get It Write in 1991 and has used her experience as a corporate communicator to help companies connect with their employees. She is particularly known for turning complicated, dense information into readable and understandable content for feature articles, newsletters, profiles and more. Clients appreciate Sue’s ability to find the human angle in any story, capture the essence of a discussion and provide a fresh perspective on a routine subject.