How to write about facts and figures Part 2

Speaking of distances. And then we also need a standard, because if a kilometer more or less all present, here’s tens, hundreds and thousands of kilometers is already an abstraction.

What about the length of lines of optical fiber, cables, wires, power, Railways, roads and other things?

Here are a few points (I am giving approximate figures, omitting the tens, units and fractional, as in this case, they interfere with the brightness of the picture):

• The distance between Moscow and new York – 7 510 kilometers. (approximate flight time 9 hours 30 minutes and this information is also useful).
• The length of any Meridian is 20 000 kilometers.
• Length of equator is 40 000 km.
• Distance from the earth to the moon is 384 400 kilometers.
• The distance from Earth to Sun – 150 million kilometers.

If we want to describe the speed of our object, you can also start from the known speeds.

• The speed of modern passenger aircraft, an average of 900 kilometers per hour.
• The speed of sound is 340.29 meters per second.
• The speed of light is 299 792 458 meters per second. We assume 300 000 000 for good measure, forgive us physics.

But to create vivid pictures you can use other images.

For example: our company ships its customers a 10 light bulbs every minute, 120 tons of paper every hour or 140 cars of products daily.

Not just “we have a lot of customers and we ship them with so many tons”, and translate the speed in packs per minute, pallets per hour, trains per day, and so on.

And, of course, need to learn to translate into human language with bird parameters such as gigahertz, terabytes, mA/hours and other pleasures technicians and system administrators.

The reader/listener/buyer it is unclear what to do with the amperes and mA, and how they should be to come happiness.

But he did not care how long the tablet will keep charging, if you look in the movie airplane during the flight from Moscow to new York, for example. And we remember that it is 9 and a half hours. So how much of the most milliamps to start to watch a movie on your tablet during takeoff in Moscow and turn it off when landing at JFK?

If offering your goods, you will be able to draw such a plot and to show the practical usefulness of complex units of measurement of physical phenomena that you believe.

Alas, often the authors of texts and speeches generously poured these same gigahertz confident that they give the text credibility and the author’s expertise and credibility.

Expertise – Yes, probably. Credibility – no.

If you bring the numbers– put them into an understandable context. When you write for example in a press release that the number of subscribers of your company – an Internet provider in the region has reached 10,000, I don’t know a lot or a little?

I have questions:

• How many lives in the region of people?
• How many of them use the Internet?
• How many subscribers from its competitors?
• As the market leader?

Without answers to these questions I do not understand what you boast.

We can write: the number of subscribers “service Provider” was 10 000, which is 12% of area residents and 30 percent of all Internet users in the region.

If you write only 12% of the inhabitants of the region – is also unconvincing. Looking for something to start from, look for a support that will show your figures in a favorable light.

For four years we sold 718 tours, hosted 94 of the delegation, has written 119 posts for this blog and attracted 20 000 subscribers.

People love numbers. People like specifics. Add specifics in his texts and public appearances, but help the reader and listener to understand the magnitude of numbers and the importance of the facts, and give them pictures.