Making Numbers Come Alive

Often in presentations we need to give our audience numbers or statistics. So often I just glaze over when a bunch of numbers are thrown at me, and if the lights are off and the projector is going it is even worse. So, when I can, I try to make the numbers come alive, become real, become images.

I am reading a novel called Suspect by Michael Robotham. This book is just a good read, nothing deep, nothing special, but a paragraph caught my eye:

The narrator, a clinical phychologist, is talking about the number of people who hurt themselves. He writes,

"One in fifteen people harm themselves at some point in their lives: that's two children in every classroom, four people on a crowded bus, twenty on a commuter train and two thousand at an Aresenal home game."

I believe Arsenal is a football team.

So why am I telling you this?. Well, the first part of the paragraph, one in fifteen people was sort of interesting, but when I could picture the classroom, the bus, the train and the game, I got a completely different impression.

So I challenge you to look in your work where you are using numbers and see if you can bring them alive with images.

By the way, did you know that here in Vancouver we make enough garbage each year to fill the BC Place Stadium to the rafters twice? Go figger.