Understanding numbers better

Making Numbers Count

Author: Chip Heath and Karla Starr

Publisher: Bantam Press 

Pages: 172 (including index)

Price: Rs 799

In 1781, after 11 years of tiresome research, Immanuel Kant published his seminal work Critique of Pure Reason. Although the book is still regarded as one of the significant contributions to philosophy, the book was not well received. It is not that Kant’s logic had flaws in it, but reviewers criticised it because he had made the work long and so hard to read that people could barely complete it. Those who did manage to get through the book barely understood it because of the complexity of argument and writing. Given his philosophy’s treatment, Kant followed with a simpler understanding of his theory two years later. He published a second and much simpler edition in 1787, following it up with Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment.

In fact, his works became so accessible that for his later work on religion, Kant had to face censorship from the Prussian state, fearing that the ideas of the French revolution would seep into Prussian society.

Unlike Kant, later philosophers did not commit the mistake of making their works challenging to understand. That has been true of most journalists and authors of books. But academics have trodden down another path, making their work more academic and out of reach from the general public. Judges in India haven’t done much better either. One of the primary problems as data permeates our lives and quantification becomes the norm is the illustration of numbers. Chip Heath and Karla Starr’s book is a guide to making numbers easier to understand. Making Numbers Count is replete with examples of how people can make numbers understandable and tolerable even for those who dread numbers. The succinct work is divided into four sub-heads running into 140 pages. It draws from the authors' experience as Stanford Professor and a journalist.

The idea throughout the book is simple; the authors start with a basic problem, give a context to it and present examples on how to solve it. For instance, consider the data-heavy phrase “34 per cent of white applicants and 14 per cent of black applicants without records received call backs, compared to 17 per cent and 5 per cent with records”. This can be simplified to: “White job applicants who had served jail time for a felony were more likely to receive a call back than Black applicants with impeccable records.” Similarly, converting a phrase such as “There are more than 400 million firearms in the US,” to something that is more contextual, their example is: “There are 400 million firearms in the US. That’s enough for every man, woman and child to own one, with enough left over that you could give one to every baby born in America for the next 20 years.” They also explain why a specific formulation was preferred over another.

Given that the book follows a set pattern, it tends to feel like a series of lectures designed to teach the reader the art of dealing with numbers. It takes a few chapters to get the reader into the groove, however.

There are enough examples throughout the book in separate boxes that help the authors drive home the point. The gist is made clear in the introduction and the epilogue. But much of the content is repetitive, and once you start getting the hang of things, you can also skip a few chapters, skimming over the examples. In fact, the authors present, in the introduction, a guide on how to glance through the chapters and scroll through the examples given in each chapter. The authors also occasionally repeat the examples to make a connection with the reader, making it even easier to skip through the pages and still link one chapter to another. The link between the chapters could have been improved, however, by repeating many more examples to help the reader gain a perspective or by preparing a style sheet for each chapter.

All the same, Making Numbers Count is an excellent read for those whose job involves explaining numbers to other people, especially laypeople. There are clear takeaways from the work and a plethora of information. For those looking to pick up the book, I would suggest working on graphics and videos. As the adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.