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

The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

Making Numbers Count

Chip Heath

The bestselling coauthor of Switch and Made to Stick

& Karla Starr

ALSO BY CHIP HEATH (AND DAN HEATH)

Made to Stick:

Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Switch:

How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Decisive:

How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

The Power of Moments:

Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

ALSO BY KARLA STARR

Can You Learn to Be Lucky?:

Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Others

A VID R EADER P RESS

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Copyright 2022 by Chip Heath

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First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition January 2022

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Interior design by Joy OMeara @ Creative Joy Designs

Jacket design and photograph by Tim Parker

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-6544-4

ISBN 978-1-9821-6545-1 (ebook)

We both fell in love with numbers as kids, thanks to the same remarkable book, the Guinness Book of World Records. It was as big as a flowerpot and four times as heavy, printed in the same small type that were reading when someone warns us to check the fine print, but was full of extraordinary facts, stories, and most importantly numbers. Worlds largest pumpkin: 2,624 pounds. Worlds fastest animal: peregrine falcon, 242 miles per hour. Most forward somersaults, underwater, in one breath: 36 by Lance Davis of Los Angeles, California.

These enticing figures, of mind-boggling diversity, were the gateway to a lifelong love of numbers. The working world is full of them. From athletes to climate scientists to marketing professionals, people use numbers to measure their work, press their case, and motivate others to change.

But with all the numbers floating around, its easy to start believing that everyone else is more on top of the numbers than we are, that somehow we missed the right class or lack the right gene, and that we are constantly at a disadvantage in understanding and using these excessively common objects.

But heres a secret: nobody really understands numbers.

Nobody.

Thats just a fact of being human. Our brains evolved to deal with very small numbers. We can recognize 1, 2, and 3 at a glance, up to 4 or 5 if were lucky. You can get a sense of this from any kids counting book; your brain shouts 3! when you see a picture of 3 goldfish, no counting necessary. Thats a process called

Indeed, most languages in the world and throughout history have names for the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. But after that, Picture the day-to-day frustration of trying to communicate in a culture that doesnt have words for numbers past 5:

Did we get enough eggs today to feed our people?

Well, we got lots of eggs. But on the other hand, weve got lots of people. So I guess well find out at dinnertime.

You said youd trade me lots of pistachios for my feather necklace.

This is lots.

Yeah, but I meant, like, lots-lots.

And more than the frustration, imagine the out-and-out tragedies that could accrue when your culture hasnt given you words for describing critical plans using numbers.

Ive told you lots of times, its lots of miles across the desert and it takes lots of days, so wed better bring lots of water!

I did bring lots.

Well, it wasnt enough lots! Now, what are our chances of reaching the oasis before we die of thirst?

One chance in, er, lots.

So it was a great advance when humans developed additional tools for doing mathfirst, systems for counting (scratches on a stone, knots on string, bar codes); then numbers (455 or 455,000); then mathematics. But while our cultural math infrastructure has changed, our brains are still the same from a biological perspective. Even if we train a lotand we do all the way up through collegemathematics is a blisteringly new piece of high-tech software strapped on top of a clunky piece of hardware. It can work, but it will never be our first instinct. Billions, trillions, millions, kajillions they all sound the same but describe wildly different realities. Our brains were designed to grok 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. After that, its just lots.

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 theres 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, youre 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 billion1,000,000,000is a number. We might think we understand it because its right there, in black and white, but it has so many zeros that our brains fog up. Its just lots. When we see how much larger it is than a million, it comes as a surprise.

Think of what we accomplished by forcing you to imagine watching your friend spend $50,000 every day for 55 years. Not only does it make the number click, it morphs our envy into something so real and palpable that well help you kick your friend in the shins. Its an animated picture that brings the number to life.

This book is based on a simple observation: we lose information when we dont translate numbers into instinctive human experience. We do hard, often painstaking work to generate the right numbers to help make a good decisionbut all that work is wasted if those numbers never take root in the minds of the decision makers. As lovers of numbers, we find this tragic. The work that is being done to understand the most meaningful things in the worldending poverty, fighting disease, conveying the scale of the universe, telling a heartbroken teen how many other times they will fall in loveis being lost because of the lack of translation.

Thats when the two of usChip, a business school professor, and Karla, a science journalistthought, There ought to be a book for this sort of thing.

But there isnt. Weve looked. There are great guides for making graphs more stylish and persuasive, or for making infographics that make a complex process easier to understand. But theres no guidebook and writing guide for the fundamental process of making numbers countgetting people to understand them in instinctive and accurate terms.