Make Your Numbers Plain to See and Easy to Understand

Don’t you just hate it when you’re in the 10-items-or-less express checkout lane at the supermarket and the person in front of you has something like 20 items in her cart? That’s what happened to me one recent Sunday. It makes me wonder whether she can’t read, can’t add or can’t give a damn.

Maybe what the supermarket needs is to post a picture of a woman with shopping cart tracks across her back instead of a sign with “10 Items Or Less” on it.

Whenever you have copy that includes lots of numbers, think about ways to turn those numbers into prose or graphics so the reader can visualize what you’re taking about.

Put the data into a chart, table or infographic–a visual representation of data. For example, take a look at “The infographic that saved millions of lives.” You can pack a lot of easy-to-understand numerical info into an itty-bitty piece of real estate.

Recently, IBM and The New York Times introduced a terrific data visualization tool, that you should take a look at.

The newspaper’s new Visualization Lab at The New York Times is based on IBM’s Many Eyes project, which  enables you to upload your own data–from Excel spreadsheets or tab-delimited text files–and create a variety of visualizations. You can generate maps and tag clouds, track rises and falls over time, compare a set of values, see relationships among data points and other visualizations.

Researchers at IBM’s Visual Communications Lab, which is part of the Collaborative User Experience Research group, created the technology behind the NYT’s and Many Eyes sites. Go there to see the many ways you can visualize data, whether it’s words in a speech or how many medals each country won at the last Olympic Games.

Once you’ve uploaded your data and created your visualization, you can link to it or embed it in your site. Many Eyes makes it easy for you by automatically generating code for live visualization or static images. You can also create topic hubs to discuss your visualizations with other site users.

You must register to use most of the site’s features. You also need to install Java if you haven’t done that.

If you want to try this cool tool but don’t have your own data, grab some data from a U.S. government site such as the U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics or the Federal Reserve.

You can also try the Visualization Lab at The New York Times to create visualizations of data contained in NYT articles.

Many Eyes has a side project called Many Eyes Wikified. Wikified can be thought of as a remix of Many Eyes, with some powerful new features that explore a novel way to create and lay out visualization dashboards, the researchers say in their blog. It’s not ready for prime time but you can sign up for the closed beta and get a sneak peek at what’s in store.

It should be plain to read

Don’t overlook any opportunity to substitute plain English and/or graphics for numbers. Long sentences packed with hard-to-imagine numbers or with too many figures are hard to follow and swallow.

If you write, “Yesterday, 8,835 cubic yards of mud slid down the hill and smothered my house,” that amount of sludge is hard to imagine. On the other hand, if you write, “Yesterday, 25 dump trucks worth of mud slid down the hill and smothered my house,” the reader has a better idea of what you’re talking about.

Stay away from sentences like this one: “New home sales rose 2.24% in 2008 compared to 3.12 % in 2007, while home values declined 20.09 % over last year’s 15.87%.” It’s confusing.

Split the data into smaller sentences if you must include all of it—say, because it’s necessary to put the figures into context. Better still, omit unnecessary figures or combine them. It’s easier on the reader if you write something like: “New home sales rose about 2% and home values declined about 20% over last year.” That’s probably all anyone wants to know.

To compute the percent of change over time, subtract the old value from the new value and divide by the old value. Multiply the result by 100 and put a % sign on it. That’s your percent change.

I think percent is easier to read than % but I don’t always do it. It depends on the look and rhythm of the sentence.

Don’t believe everything you learned in grade school

Spell out numbers in direct quotes. “On Halloween, I usually pass out eighty-eight apples with razor blades in them,” Mr. Getoffmylawn says.

Don’t combine number spellings and numerals in the same sentence. It’s not: “In November, the state elected two senators and 18 congressmen. It’s either “two Republicans and eighteen Democrats” or “2 Republicans and 18 Democrats.” The AP Stylebook and Chicago Manual of Style differ on which to use.

Now, what about that “spell out numbers under 10” rule you learned in elementary school? It’s too late to change anyone’s mind about this now, but you should be using numerals under 10 for dates, ages, sizes, scores, money, and points on a scale. Hence, 2 weeks (not two weeks) and 2 million dollars (not two million dollars). You don’t write two GB. You write 2GB. Same idea. A lot of people weren’t paying attention when teach went over that part.

Don’t start sentences with numerals unless it’s a year. “1917 was the bloodiest of World War ,” is okay. “88 bag pipers wearing kilts paraded down the street on Music Appreciation Day,” is not.