Making Numbers Count Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Rule 2. Concrete Is Better: Use Whole Numbers to Describe Whole Objects, Not Decimals, Fractions, or Percentages.27”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The art and science of communicating numbers

“Rounding early means sharper recall in the end.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The art and science of communicating numbers

“It’s rude to make people feel they’re being excluded from a conversation.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The art and science of communicating numbers

“The higher numbers get, the less sensitive we get to them, a phenomenon psychologists have labeled “psychophysical numbing.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The art and science of communicating numbers

“A single M&M has 4 calories. In order to burn off the calories in a single M&M, you’d have to walk 2 flights of stairs.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“Odds of winning Powerball: 1 in 292,201,338 Imagine having to guess which second of a day someone is thinking of—any date, hour, minute, and second from the time they’re born to the time they turn 9. If you match, you win the lottery prize. The jackpot is yours. All you have to do is think of the resident of the United States whose name is written down over there on that folded piece of paper. (Hint: they are older than the age of 10.)”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“There are a little more than 50 million people in England, and around 50 deaths each day via accidental causes (slipping in the tub; being swept away in a flooding river; falling from a ladder). The daily risk of dying there in an accident is roughly 1 in a million. Your risk of dying unexpectedly in England on any given day is the same as your odds of having to guess which date someone is thinking of between 500 BC and August 1, 2200.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“Imagine if Earth’s 7.7 billion people were shrunk to a village of 100: » 26 villagers would be children (14 years old or younger). 5 villagers would come from North America, 8 from Latin America, 10 from Europe, 17 from Africa, and 60 from Asia. » 31 would be Christians, 24 Muslims, 15 Hindus, and 7 Buddhists. 7 villagers would represent every other religion, and 16 wouldn’t identify with a religion. » 7 people would speak English as a first language, and another 20 would speak it as a second. 14 villagers would be illiterate; 7 would have a college degree. » 29 people would be overweight, and 10 would be going hungry.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Hydrogen 62% Oxygen 24% Carbon 13% Nitrogen 1.1% Other”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“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

“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

“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

“Make the baskets as small as you can while retaining the wholeness of whole numbers. If 2/3rds or .67 or 67% of people didn’t like the new flavor, then make them feel like people in a room. “2 out of 3 people thought cheesy marshmallow was “disgusting.” Going up to 67 out of 100 would dilute understanding.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“For numbers less than 1, you can use a method we call “counting in baskets” to make things start to show up as whole numbers. If you find that .2% of people have a certain trait, use a basket size of at least 500, maybe 1,000, to make them show up as real people. “1 out of 500” or “2 out of 1,000” makes these abstract percentages into real things.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“Rule #2. Concrete Is Better: Use Whole Numbers to Describe Whole Objects, Not Decimals, Fractions, or Percentages.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“5/11 is about half. 217 is about 200.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“Rule #1. Simpler Is Better: Round with Enthusiasm.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

“The value of the new A&W burger depended on consumers comparing two fractions: 1/3 and 1/4. But fractions are difficult for everyone, because they’re parts of things as opposed to whole objects. We like to count things, and fractions don’t equal “things.” So, we jump to the closest available whole numbers. 4 is bigger than 3, so we mistakenly infer that a 1/4-pounder is a bigger burger than a 1/3-pounder.”
― Chip Heath, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers