With the advent of Google and the Internet we now have a world of data at our fingertips. Writers and communicators are all too ready to throw around a bunch of numbers. But we get dumbed down and numbed out with all this data. Numbers fly left and right. Some days you read about 100 people killed. Or hear about 1 million people affected by some disease or other. Or take the population of Earth at more than 7 billion!
Number bombardment raises the fundamental question of what those numbers actually mean. This is where a graphic illustration comes in handy. In a single moment, it hits home.
Many of you know I recently returned from a sabbatical to Australia where I saw some amazing displays of art and culture. One of them was a powerful visualization that created a memorable impression that I still think about. Part of the Perth International Arts Festival, it was called “Of All the People in All the World.”
When I first walked into the room I was puzzled at first. What were all these piles of rice all about? Glancing closer revealed their meaning. Each grain of rice represented a single human being. For example, a single grain represented King Richard the Third. Next to it were two piles representing the number of people born and dying on this particular day. Now the true power of the statistic came into focus. For the first time for me, human statistics took on a human meaning. This concrete physical display enabled me to connect with the data in a much deeper way. It touched my heart as I saw the grains of rice representing individual souls.
Next time you think about throwing out statistics to your audience, remember those grains of rice I saw in Australia. The take-home message? Make your data as visual as possible to get your message across!
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