“Great clots of numbers dropped into a story with a steam shovel create a wall of abstraction.”

— William Blundell, author, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing

Don’t create a wall of abstraction. Reduce statistical clutter, increase readability and make numbers more understandable. Here’s how:

1. Use good numbers.

Get the number right, and get the right numbers.

Some 72% of companies have at least one graphical distortion in their annual reports, says Jimmy Locklear, executive vice president, Phelan Annual Reports Inc.

Make sure yours is among the other 28%.

“Your presentation will stand or fall on the quality, relevance and integrity of your content,” writes Edward Tufte, “the da Vinci of data.”

“If your numbers are boring, it’s too late. If your images aren’t relevant, putting them in four-color won’t help. Design can never rescue failed content. The best design can do is not screw up good content.”

2. Make your point.

“Few members of our audience turn to The Oregonian because they’re craving a good story problem.”

— Jack Hart, managing editor, The Oregonian

What’s the bottom line in this paragraph?

Who knows? The writer reported the data, but didn’t explain what the data meant.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

— Albert Einstein, genius

I know, I know, you dug up all these numbers, and now you want to use them. But just because you know the data doesn’t mean your readers must, too. If you focus on what you want your readers to take away from the data, you may find that you can make your point with far fewer numbers.

Ask, “Which of these numbers really explains the story to our readers?” Then dump the rest.

3. Use no more than three numbers per paragraph.

“Numbers bog down the text. Loading a story up with numbers almost guarantees low readership.”

— Jack Hart, managing editor, The Oregonian

Paragraphs packed with numbers just make your readers’ eyes glaze over. They look hard to read, so your audience members may decide to tune out before they even attempt the text. This paragraph, for instance, has six numbers:

Limit yourself to two or three numbers per paragraph. Count toward your total:

• Dates
• Times
• Spelled-out numbers like “two”

4. Communicate numbers visually.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a graph is worth a million numbers.

To cut clutter, take some of your numbers out of the paragraph and place them into a simple table:

5. Choose the right kind of chart.

Bars, pies or lines? The right chart depends on the information you’re conveying. Use a:

• Bar chart to show how each piece relates to the others
• Pie chart to show how each piece relates to the other and to the whole
• Vertical bar chart to fix several things in one moment in time
• Line chart to show trends
• Table to compare two or more items by two or more characteristics

Choose bars and pies. Bar graphs and pie charts are both more effective than line charts at helping readers understand statistical data.

6. Communicate with charts.

Make sure your chart says what you mean.

• Cut your pie into big pieces. Pie charts start getting confusing when you have more than five “slices,” Locklear says. “Slices become too thin, and it becomes difficult to differentiate and compare values.”
• Position time values from left to right. Some charts start with the most recent year to highlight it. But because Westerners read from left to right, that can confuse readers. Instead, place the earliest year at the left, Locklear advises, the most recent year at the right.
• Keep it simple. A chart should make one point clearly. You say you have more than one idea? Then you need more than one chart.
• Keep it clear. In a table with more than five rows of columns, use screens to delineate each row.

7. Present your chart.

Transform your chart into a free-standing data package.

Write a headline. A real one, with a hook. Not just a label.

Write a caption. People are more likely to read it than the text of your article. What do you want them to take away from this chart?

Rising interest rates make homes less affordable

It adds up: A small increase in interest rates can make a big difference in your monthly budget.

8. Spread your stats around.

“Numbers bog down the text. Loading a story up with numbers almost guarantees low readership.”

— Jack Hart, managing editor, The Oregonian

Pace yourself. Limit yourself to two paragraphs containing numbers in a row. You don’t need to cram all the facts and figures into one section of the story.

9. Round numbers off.

Unless your readers are statisticians, it’s rare that they’ll need six decimals of precision (or even one!) in the numbers you report.

• Avoid: 64.36752%
• Better: 64%
• Even better: Almost two-thirds
• Best: Two out of three

10. Use words.

Substitute words for numbers whenever you can:

• “One in five” gives a better picture than “20%.”
• “Nearly doubled” means more than “a 97%increase.”
• “Two-thirds” is clearer than “67%.”

11. Do use precision to make a point.

If your point is fragility, go ahead and use the precise number. That’s what the late-great Kansas City Star columnist C.W. Gusewelle did to help readers understand how delicate and vulnerable monarch butterflies are as they migrate south for the winter:

Consulting the literature, I find that the average weight of an adult monarch may be expressed as 0.0176 of an ounce, about the same as a good-sized snowflake.

The same thing is true if your point is specificity. Some of my clients in the telecom industry use “five nines” — or 99.999%— to express the accuracy of their equipment.

“Nearly 100%,” obviously, doesn’t say the same thing.

Learn more about writing statistics.

• What’s the latest U.S. numeracy rate? Here’s why your readers struggle to understand your numbers.
• How to write statistics right: The fanciest chart can’t overcome a bad data set or standard deviation.
• What’s the effect of statistics in persuasive writing? Reframe the data to improve decision-making.

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Which is more dangerous? A disease that kills 1,286 out of every 10,000 people it strikes? Or one that kills 12.86% of its victims?

The former is about 20% more dangerous, said a group of college students, according to an article in Money magazine. In fact, 1,286 out of 10,000 is just a different expression of 12.86%.

“If you tell someone that something will happen to one out of 10 people,” Paul Slivic, University of Oregon psychologist, told Money, “they think, ‘Well, who’s the one?’”

To make statistics more compelling, make them more emotional.

Here are three more things to consider when choosing a frame for your data:

1. Choose a positive frame.

Which steak tastes better? A steak that’s 25% fat? Or one that’s 75% lean?

People in one study said they were more likely to buy the 75% lean steak rather than the 25% fat steak, even though they are the exact same steak (Johnson and Levin, 1985; Levin et al., 1985).

Call it the framing effect bias: People react differently to an option or idea based on how it is presented. So frame your products and positively instead of negatively.

When I wrote a charitable giving annual report, my clients were devastated to learn that 25% of Kansas City households and 21% of local businesses contributed nothing to charity. I wrote:

Today, 75% of Kansas City households and 79% of Kansas City businesses contribute to not-for-profit organizations.

Because it’s true. And it’s a better frame.

2. Tap the power of percentages.

How long would you be willing to walk to avoid a 25% Lyft or Uber fare increase? What about a 1.25x increase?

• Some 38% of people were willing to walk to avoid the 1.25x fare, according to a survey by Irrational Labs and Common Cents Lab.
• But 44% were willing to walk to avoid the 25% increase — even though 25% is the same amount as 1.25x.
• But wait! There’s more! People were more willing to walk 5 minutes to avoid a 25% increase vs. a 1.75x fare — even though 1.75 is 50 percentage points more than 25%.

Takeaway: Use absolute numbers for increases. But when offering discounts, stick with percentages.

3. Use like forms.

Which is bigger: three-quarters, 80% or seven out of 10? How much bigger?

Don’t make readers perform mathematical backflips to follow the numbers in your copy. Don’t compare apples to watermelons.

When you compare numbers, put them all in the same form. In this case: 75%, 80% and 70%.

___

Sources: I.P. Levin and G.J. Gaeth, “How consumers are affected by the framing of attribute information before and after consuming the product,” Journal of Consumer Research, No. 15, 1988, pp. 374-378

Gerd Gigerenzer and Adrian Edwards, “Simple Tools for Understanding Risks: From Innumeracy to Insight,” British Medical Journal, vol. 327, no. 7417, Sept. 27, 2003, pp. 741-744

TJ Larkin & Sandar Larkin, “Communicating Risk in Health Care,” Larkin Page, #27, February 2006

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice,” Science, Vol. 211, 30, January 1981

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Nope, this isn’t a joke about writers’ math skills: Just 12% of adults around the world are numerically literate, according to an enormous global literacy study.

Which means that 88% of your audience members may find your bar charts, financial objectives and other communications involving numbers discombobulating.

Welcome to the world of numeracy, or numerical literacy, today, according to the 2013 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, or PIAAC.

Numeracy: the ability to understand and work with numbers.

PIAAC is an enormous, every-10-year literacy assessment, developed and organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The study seeks to determine how well adults in the age group 16-65 are prepared to function in today’s society.

Here’s how they stack up …

How low can you go?

The results? Worldwide, adults weighed in at an average numeracy rate of 269 out of 500. That puts them at level 2, or below basic, numeracy skills.

Number crunching

Only nine countries, led by Japan, achieve even basic average numeracy rates

That means that, on average, these adults can figure out how many layers of candles are packed in a box of 105, with five rows of seven candles per layer. But they struggle to calculate trip expenses at 35 cents a mile plus $40 a day from a motor vehicle logbook with columns for date of trip, odometer readings and distance traveled.

How can you communicate numerical information in an environment where many people barely understand simple math?

___

Source: “Literacy, Numeracy, and Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments Among U.S. Adults: Results from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012,” Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, or PIAAC, National Center for Education Statistics

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When I wrote an annual report about charitable giving in Kansas City, I wanted to compare the $770 million Kansas Citians gave to charitable organizations in one year to make that number more meaningful to the audience.

To track down the comparisons, I:

1. Used the Business Journal’s Book of Lists to report that $770 million was “more than the annual revenues of Blue Cross/Blue Shield” and “more than the combined annual budgets of the metropolitan area’s three largest school districts.”
2. Checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find the city’s average wage. After a few minutes with my calculator, I was able to report: “To achieve that amount, some 24,000 people would have to work full time for a year at Kansas City’s average hourly wage of $15.59.”
3. Did the math. From the Book of Lists, I learned the size of the student body of one of the city’s largest school districts. I divided $770 million by the number of students. The result: in the neighborhood of $35,000 per student.
4. Asked: “What would that buy that students might want?” (That helps you sync your metaphors with your topic.) My answer: some kind of car. That year, Jeeps were popular, so I …
5. Googled “how much is a jeep” to find out what kind of Jeep I could get for $35,000.

As a result, I was able to report that:

The $770 million Kansas Citians give to charity each year is more than enough to buy every student in the Kansas City, Kan., School District a brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee.

I know, I know. When you think about statistics, you hear:

Blah blah blah data set blah blah blaw standard deviation blah blah blah data analysis blah blah blah summary statistics blah blah blah distribution of your data blah blah blah measure of variability blah blah blah raw data blah blah blah inferential statistics blah blah blah measures of central tendency.

Me too. But anyone who’s mastered seventh-grade math can add some statistical evidence to most stories. All it takes is some extra time with your BFF and research assistant Google, the calculator on your phone and a few minutes to figure out how to figure it out.

That’s important. As Chip Scanlan of the Poynter Institute says:

“Every time you feel your fingers reach for the top row of the keyboard, ask, ‘What’s it like?’”

Resources for writing descriptive statistics

Need a starting point for your statistical analogies? Check out these resources:

• Aneki.com. Rankings and statistics on hundreds of topics, from America’s leading causes of death to the world’s best airports.
• Business Journal’s Book of Lists. Find annual revenues of top local companies and more.
• CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics FastStats. Find out how many people visited an emergency room or died at work in 2019.
• City-Data. Get everything from satellite photos to resident stats on U.S. cities and states.
• Finding Data on the Internet. Journalist Robert Niles’ list of helpful links to “reputable data on everything from public safety to campaign contributions”
• Google. You can’t beat it for finding, say, a list of the top-paid U.S. CEOs, the budget of Uganda or things that are worth $770 million
• Google’s Dataset Search. “If you’re looking for data, your search should start here.” — The Poynter Institute
• The Polling Report. Find out how many people think what.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dig up average hourly wages and more.
• U.S. Census Bureau. For those times when you just need to know that the world population is 7,742,206,702

Get additional information about writing with statistics.

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Compare the impact of this statement …’

“Each day, we lose 30 children to gun violence.”

… to the impact of this one:

“Information is absorbed in direct proportion to its vividness,” says Diane West, president and co-founder of 2Connect, a presentation-skills training company.

The classroom is more visual and, therefore, more powerful.

Or make it an auditorium.

When Christy Rippel needed to communicate how the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s radiology department had reduced sedation rates in children for imaging exams, the communicator wrote:

It’s hard to see 333 people, easier to see an auditorium full of them.

Pro tip: Divide by population.

Even if you’re not comparing populations, you may be able to divide by people for a bring-it-home numerical comparison.

• Start with your big number. Let’s call it $5.4 billion.
• Find a population. The U.S. population, maybe, which you can always find at the U.S. Census Bureaus’ Population Clock. That’s 300 million and change.
• Do the math. $5.4 billion divided by 300 million equals $18.
• Then think of an item that costs about that much. What costs about $18? A book.
• ID a topical one of those items. What’s a hot book? (You might hit Amazon’s Hot New Releases for inspiration here.) Magnolia Table tops the list — and just happens to sell for $17.99.
• Finish that thought. “That’s enough to get every man, woman and child in America a copy of Magnolia Table.”

Write about people, not percentages.

Which is more dangerous? A disease that kills 1,286 out of every 10,000 people it strikes? Or one that kills 12.86% of its victims?

The former, said a group of college students, according to an article in Money magazine.

To make statistics more compelling, make them more emotional. As Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychologist, told Money:

“If you tell someone that something will happen to one out of 10 people, they think, ‘Well, who’s the one?’”

Turn populations into people, not percentages.

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