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Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers QUOTES

Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers QUOTES

1 " A million seconds is 12 days. A billion is 1,000 times greater than 1,000,000. A billion seconds is 32 years. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

2 " Our development team of 100 engineers drinks a lot of coffee… Equipping each floor with new coffee stations would cost $15,000, plus additional ongoing fees for supplies and maintenance. At 10 minutes a day per person traveling down to the break room for coffee and back, our engineering department spends 80 hours a week getting caffeine. New coffee makers would pay for themselves within weeks; afterward, they’d make money for the company. Our current system acts as if we’ve hired 2 full-time engineers just to walk back and forth from their offices to the break room, and their hall banter isn’t even close to West Wing quality. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

3 " In 2016, the $148 million allocated to the National Endowment for the Arts accounted for .004% of the federal budget expenditures ($3.9 trillion). Suppose we eliminated it in response to criticism? Trying to balance the budget by eliminating the NEA would be like editing a 90,000-word novel by eliminating 4 words. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

4 " But if you need to bring in multiple stats, you don’t want to mix basket sizes. You want a basket small enough that it feels real and doesn’t make your audience do math, but large enough that multiple stats are directly comparable. 1 in 6 people thought cheesy marshmallow flavor was intriguing, while 4 in 6 thought it was disgusting (note that we changed the basket size above so that the “2 in 3” and the “1 in 6” would live in similar-size baskets, and be easier to compare). "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

5 " George A. Miller’s “Magical Number 7” has an expansion module, under certain conditions. We can load around 7 coherent “units” into our mental working space, but depending on our learning and expertise, those units may vary in size. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

6 " If we counted each atom in a human body, which elements would be the most common? Consider some alternative ways of expressing this: "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

7 " Hydrogen 62% Oxygen 24% Carbon 13% Nitrogen 1.1% Other "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

8 " For every 10 atoms in your body, 6 are hydrogen, 3 oxygen, 1 carbon. All the other elements are much less common. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

9 " 40% of U.S. adults do not always wash their hands after using the bathroom at home. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

10 " 2 out of every 5 people you shake hands with may not have washed their hands between using the toilet and touching your hands. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

11 " If you want to help people understand quickly, define your new concept in terms of something your audience already knows. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

12 " As you search, favor objects that only need a simple multiplier. 4 koalas or 72 pistachios are tougher to work with than simple multipliers such as 2 or half. In the research, people understood and recalled number translations best when the multiplier was 1. For example, “social distance is about the length of a tatami mat” (if you’re Japanese) or “almost the length of an adult cassowary” (if you’re from Australia), or “approximately an adult gator” (if you don’t need your ankles). "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

13 " In 2020, the global video games market reached $180 billion. By comparison, in the movie business, world box office revenues were $42 billion in 2019 (pre-COVID), while world "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

14 " The video game industry is more than 4 times the size of the movie industry, and about 9 times the size of the music industry. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

15 " In 2020, the global video games market reached $180 billion. By comparison, in the movie business, world box office revenues were $42 billion in 2019 (pre-COVID), while world music revenues were $22 billion. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

16 " Hopper pressed her engineers to streamline their code. (In wartime, a fraction of a second can separate life from death.) During lectures, she would hold up a bundle of wire cut to the length that electricity traveled in a microsecond, or 1 one-millionth of a second. It was 984 feet long. She said, “I sometimes think we ought to hang one [of these bundles] over every programmer’s desk, or around their neck, so they know what they’re throwing away when they throw away microseconds. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

17 " Consider this thought experiment designed to help people understand the difference between “a million” and “a billion.” You and a friend each enter a lottery with several large prizes. But there’s a catch: If you win, you must spend $50,000 of your prize money each day until it runs out. You win a million dollars. Your friend wins a billion. How long does it take each of you to spend your lottery windfall? As a millionaire, your encounter with runaway consumerism is surprisingly short. You go bust after a mere 20 days. If you win on Thanksgiving, you’re out of money more than a week before Christmas. (Sorry, Cousin Ana, the lottery money ran out before we bought your present, but we did get you the Orange Crush umbrella!) For your billionaire friend, resources would hold out a tad longer. He or she would have a full-time job spending $50,000 a day for… 55 years. Approximately two generations. Almost 14 presidential terms. One wait to hear your name called at the DMV. 1 billion—1,000,000,000—is a number. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

18 " We might think we understand it because it’s right there, in black and white, but it has so many zeros that our brains fog up. It’s just “lots.” When we see how much larger it is than a million, it comes as a surprise. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

19 " The U.S. government has a 5 A Day campaign that’s designed to encourage kids to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. McDonald’s alone outspends this campaign by a ratio of 350 to 1. "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

20 " We know the fast-food companies have big ad budgets, we know that they outspend healthy messages, but 20 times more, 143 times more, 350 times more? What’s the big deal? "

― Chip Heath , Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers