# Making Numbers Count

By Simon Hørup Eskildsen · 2022-03-22 · Book by Chip Heath, rated 3/5 · https://sirupsen.com/books/numbers-count

An entire book about how to present numbers to humans. A topic worth spending a
100 pages on, I'd say. But nothing that'll blow your socks off. There's a lot of
cool examples in there to keep you entertained. If I was a data scientist or
otherwise spent more time than I do presenting numbers to people, then this
would probably tick up to 4 stars of usefulness for me.

Dos:

* Make it vivid, e.g. instead of 40% of US adults don't wash their hands after
  going to the bathroom, say 2 of 5 you shake hands with didn't wash their
  hands.
* Make it concrete, e.g. don't say 3 or 4 ounces, say the weight of a deck of
  cards.
* Combine with surprise to make it memorable, e.g. Replace your lights with CFLs
  when your child is learning how 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.
* Category jump, e.g. comparing California to the size of a country makes it
  more memorable.

Don'ts:

* Using big numbers that are unrelatable, e.g. LeBron scored 35,000 points in
  the first 18 years of his career.