Representing large numbers in a speech
As I’ve written on this blog in the past, it’s important for speakers who are subject matter experts to present statistics in a way that makes sense to the audience. This can sometimes be done with effective graphics. At other times an analogy or comparison works well.
In a recent Wall Street Journal review of Tom Bower’s book Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century a couple of very effective examples caught my eye:
- The world spends $2 trillion on oil annually. That’s $4 million “every minute of every day, every day of every year.”
- The world produces nearly 1,000 barrels of oil every second. “If those barrels were physically stacked up, the pile would grow taller at 2,000 miles an hour.”
The last statistic could be made even more vivid by explaining that this means the barrels would circle the earth every twelve and a half minutes. Quite a gusher!
Once the true scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is known we’ll need vivid and creative ways to explain the scale of the spill in ways that ordinary people can make sense of.
3 Comments so far
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Couldn’t agree with you more. Statistics are such an integral part of so many presentations, but given without context or visualization, all they are are numbers whizzing by on a powerpoint (or in the audience’s heads). The 2 points that you highlighted make the numbers come alive – and what a difference it makes to an audience!
By Suzannah on 07.06.10 9:18 am
I really like these examples. It’s always great when you can make something abstract more concrete. Thanks so much, Ian. Cindy Starks
By Cindy Starks on 07.08.10 5:12 am
Here’s a fun website that gives you a way to give your numbers some scale today.
By Ian on 05.02.11 3:48 pm
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