How to Make Extreme Numbers Resonate

Both colossally large and infinitesimally small numbers can be hard to fathom, because they’re so abstract. Visualization can make data at the extremes easier to grasp. The key to doing it well is finding the right scale and the right approach. Here are three examples of visuals that make huge numbers, tiny numbers, and moving numbers easier to grasp. How massive is 18 billion coffee pods? Challenge: Green Mountain sold 18 billion coffee pods in two years. How can you give people a concrete sense of just how many objects that is? Solution: Use physical space to create context. You may have heard something described as “wrapping around the earth three times” or “reaching to the moon and back.” But we have a hard time imagining such spatial relationships. Try using something closer to human scale—for example, cups stacked in a city block, with buildings and cars to show relative size. A stack of 18 billion 2″ x 2″ x 1.75″ coffee pods would fill one New York City block to approximately the height of a 30-story building. How miniscule is 0.03% of basketball players? Challenge: Only three in 10,000 high school basketball players ever make it to the NBA. How can you give someone a deep understanding of the rarity of that feat? Solution: Use noise to drown out the sparse signals. You may have seen attempts to show tiny values by inflating proportions: A part per billion, for example, might be described as a needle in a 100-ton haystack. But just how big is a 100-ton haystack? Try using visuals that show so much data that the important points are hard to find. The effort it takes reinforces the tininess of the value. How complex is the movement of 220,000 people between cities? Challenge: Every year tens of thousands of people leave one U.S. city for another. How can you show changes on this scale when it’s so hard to keep track of complex movement? Solution: Use space to show transfers. Often you’ll see circular diagrams (called chord diagrams) that show values starting in one place and going to another. But enclosure in a circle can make it hard to read the information. Try using what’s known as an alluvial or a Sankey diagram to show flow in open space. The intermingling of lines enhances the sense of complexity. Visualizations by L-Dopa

How to Make Extreme Numbers Resonate

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