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comment by Wed7pm
Wed7pm  ·  4642 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Statistical numbing: Why millions can die and we don't care
I think if statistics are going to have an impact on people who don't naturally think in numbers, they need to be explained somehow - maybe in a diagram, or translated somehow as if they're a foreign language.

Here's what happened when I read the sentence you quoted about 29,000 children having died in the last 90 days: apparently I didn't read it at all. After seeing your comment here, I went back to skim-read the article again. That sentence was in a paragraph after mention of 12 million people being malnourished and 640,000 starving, and apparently that's when I stopped paying attention. Those numbers were already too much, and I mean the numbers were too much, instead of the facts they were trying to relate. That's the screwy part of this. It shouldn't matter how the news is conveyed when the reality is so horrifying, but it does matter. I read numbers such as "640,000" as if they say "mumble-mumble-big-number-etc" and instead of trying to understand them or get a picture of what they're saying, I just ignore them instead.

I know that's not really what the article was talking about; it's just something I think is relevant.





mk  ·  4642 days ago  ·  link  ·  
So interesting. Really, now that this is known, there should be effort put into researching solutions. I don't think that anecdotes are the only way. As you mention, a diagram might be more effective.

Here is a somewhat related effort by Information is Beautiful regarding dangers associated with the HPV vaccine:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2011/is-the-hpv-vaccin...

I think it's pretty effective.

Wed7pm  ·  4642 days ago  ·  link  ·  
You're right. That visualisation is great - immediate impact; easy to understand.