Metaphor

What writers & others say

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“Numbers, when they’re large enough, simply blow our mental fuses. People often find anything with an ‘-illion’ on the end incomprehensible.”

— Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, authors of The Numbers Game

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“Great clots of numbers dropped into a story with a steam shovel create a wall of abstraction.”

— William Blundell, author, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing

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“Big numbers fuzz our brains, and that is just as true in business as it is in public policy.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

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“Speaking in ‘millions’ and ‘billions’ is like your second year of Spanish: You’ve memorized the vocabulary, but it’s hard to think in the language.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

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“The challenge of communicating the significance of numbers — and acting on them — is to find ways to bring them closer to people’s day-to-day experience.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

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“Some commentators have tried various ways to put [numbers into] perspective — if you laid those bills end to end, how many times would they circle the earth?

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