Recommendation
Enter complex numbers, if you can't avoid them, write them properly.

Chapter 1 | Translate All the Numbers

How to approach the foreign language of numbers
All numbers can be translated
Avoid numbers
There is power in 1 - Beyond the trap of gigantism
Find user-friendly numbers

Chapter 2 | Finding Numbers Close to Everyday Life

Make numbers familiar, concrete, and human
Compare with something simple and familiar
From abstract numbers to concrete objects
Convert numbers into various units—time, space, distance, money, and even Pringles.
Human scale, people are the standard

Chapter 3 | Add Emotion to Numbers

How to Change Your Thinking and Behavior with Numbers
Nightingale, who saved lives with numbers
Comparison, absolute best, beyond categories
There's a different emotional combination that hits the nail on the head.
“This is not a number.
“It’s your story.”
Demonstrate the numbers
The weight of statistics comes from the process.
Encore Technique, Deliver the Final Blow
Expectations are meant to be shattered

Chapter 4 | Make Numbers Miniature

There are numbers that are easy to handle
Draw a map so you don't get lost.
The time map is the best map
Create easy-to-handle miniatures

As you can see, no one is weak when it comes to numbers.
Appendix 3 Translation Principles for Number Sticker Messages
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■ The world's most popular business book, "Stick!", has become even more powerful with numbers.
“If you can’t avoid complex data, use it properly.
“So that it ‘sticks’ to your mind!”

The business classic "Stick!" co-authored in 2006 by Stanford University organizational behavior professor Chip Heath and management expert Dan Heath, also known as the Heath brothers.
This book has been praised for changing the paradigm of marketing language by introducing a method of designing messages that stick in the mind within a second of hearing and are never forgotten.
For the past 15 years, Professor Chip Heath has been teaching this at Stanford MBA programs, as well as in various corporate and public lectures.
“There are no ‘numbers’ in messages that have survived through the ages.
This is because the human brain perceives numbers as a foreign language.
“If you want to persuade someone, avoid numbers at all costs.” But one day, a student raised an objection.
“I am an investment banker.
All my ideas have to do with numbers.
“If you take the numbers out, you can’t talk.” In an era where data-driven decision-making and management strategies have become essential, Chip Heath could no longer ignore the strong demand from the business world that “no one can be persuaded without actual ‘numbers.’”
After studying psychology, sociology, and anthropological studies on number systems, he developed his own sticker message theory, which was reborn as the 'number sticker message' theory that makes numbers stick to the mind.


"Numbers Stick!" is a book that contains everything about the next level of "number storytelling."
This book doesn't teach you how to analyze data, draw graphs, or create fancy infographics.
This is a guide that teaches you how to translate numbers that are difficult to read into intuitive and accurate language so that others can understand them.
It presents principles for transforming complex data into effective messages, including simplicity, plausibility, familiarity, process conversion, emotional approach, and map display, and adds practicality by covering practical application cases.
This book will be a powerful tool for all those in this era who need to persuade others, including those in all fields of business, including marketing and communications, as well as educators, students, office workers, and creators. It is worthy of being called "another must-read for those who are good at their jobs," following "Stick!"


The Curse of Knowledge: Why Data Is So Difficult to Explain
"Enough with the incomprehensible list of numbers! Storytelling is more important than analysis."

In a Stanford lecture, the author presented simple numerical data to MBA and engineering students and asked them to translate it into a memorable message.
The message from the self-proclaimed experts in data analysis was a complete failure.
Students were incapable of 'storytelling' complex data in a way that people could understand.
We have fallen into the trap of the 'curse of knowledge', which means that once we acquire specialized knowledge, we cannot persuade people who do not know it.


From marketing experts to fitness coaches and climate scientists, people today are expected to make decisions, big and small, based on expert knowledge and scientifically derived data.
The problem is that the human brain has trouble recognizing numbers beyond 5, as if they were a foreign language.
The author argues that unless numbers are translated into intuitively recognizable experiences, most people will not be able to properly perceive or accept the information, ultimately leading to a breakdown in communication.
For example, if the numbers 1,000,000 (one million) and 1,000,000,000 (one billion) are written as is on the PPT in the presentation, the audience will be busy counting the zeros and miss the main point you are trying to convey.
How about translating it like this? "If you win a million-dollar lottery, you can only spend $50,000 a day for 20 days, while your friend who wins $1 billion can spend $50,000 a day for 55 years."
“Until his children grow up and give him grandchildren.” He immediately understands the difference between a million and a billion, and even feels a strange sense of jealousy as the contrasting futures of his friend and himself are vividly depicted before his eyes.

In this way, the author went beyond creating a simple technique for translating numbers. Over the years, he collected and refined various examples with his students, perfecting a technique for numeric storytelling that sticks in the mind in just one second.
This book contains the Stanford University lectures that received overwhelming praise and standing ovations.
For experts, it offers ways to transform abstract data into clear, persuasive language, while for non-experts, it provides insights on how to ask the right questions to get to the heart of the information.


How a headache-inducing number becomes an unforgettable, super-powerful message
From Microsoft and Steve Jobs to social distancing campaigns around the world.

So how do we transform numbers into powerful messages? After a decade of research, Microsoft Research discovered that adding context to numeric search results helps users remember the information better (Chapter 1, "Translating All the Numbers"). For example, adding context like "twice the size of California" to the information that Pakistan is 880,000 square kilometers cut recall errors in half.
This is an application of one of the principles of designing number sticker messages: ‘Compare with something familiar and simple.’
User-friendly storytelling techniques have also been actively utilized in campaigns around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number '1.8 meters' for social distancing was transformed into familiar and everyday metaphors from each country's cultural background, such as one surfboard (San Diego, USA), one bear (Russia), two baguettes (France), and four koalas (Australia), creating a message that is unforgettable once heard.


One of the best ways to steal hearts with numbers is to add 'wonder' to them.
If you set the rules first and then break expectations (the encore technique), the surprise is doubled, and the late Steve Jobs was a master of this technique.
Remember his shocking presentation where he pulled a first-generation MacBook Air out of an envelope and demonstrated it?
To emphasize how thin the MacBook Air is, Jobs said this while showing a picture on the screen comparing it to a thin laptop from rival Sony.
“The rear thickness of the MacBook is 0.76 inches.
And it gets thinner and thinner as you go forward, with the front end measuring just 0.16 inches.
The important thing is that the thickest part of the MacBook Air is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony notebook.”

This book introduces clear numeric storytelling techniques such as changing the units of numbers, making them human-scale, and transcending categories, while presenting various examples of numeric sticker messages being used in real-world settings, from advertising copy to critical decision-making processes that can change the fate of companies and countries.
By presenting the process of transforming dry statistics into powerful messages in a 'before & after' format, it helps readers intuitively understand and experience the technique of identifying core information beyond the numbers and turning it into a powerful message.


■ The secret behind designing number sticker messages that steal hearts and move the world
From Nightingale, who saved lives with numbers, to the New York Times, which exposed gender inequality.

When the number of deaths from COVID-19 across the United States surpassed 100,000 in 2020, The New York Times published a special article.
The newspaper immediately listed the names and brief personal details of the 1,000 deceased on the front page. ("The weight of statistics comes from the process") The real names and brief stories of the deceased, published across three pages, made people feel the weight of life beyond the numbers, thereby eliciting a genuine sense of remembrance.


Sometimes statistics are considered pure and the most reliable evidence, but people often don't know what to 'feel' from numbers and are rather insensitive to large numbers.
To effectively communicate statistics, you need to get straight to the point and make the audience "feel" the numbers.
It is a powerful weapon that can change people's perception by adding emotional appeal to numbers.
As another example, let's look at a sentence included by the New York Times to strongly raise the issue of gender inequality in the workplace.
“The number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies is lower than the number of CEOs named James.” Even without revealing the exact number of male CEOs named James, it is enough to reflect on the severity of the gender inequality problem.


From Florence Nightingale, who used statistics to persuade the nation and the public during the Crimean War in the mid-19th century to save lives on the battlefield, to President Eisenhower's speech in 1953 calling for an end to the war, these are historical examples of the effective use of the sticker message technique of "combination of emotions."
We can see that number sticker messages not only encourage a change in consciousness and action for a better society, but also provide an opportunity to think about what communication is for making sound decisions.


The author says that the purpose of numerical storytelling is to ultimately make people see beyond the numbers.
The point is that numbers are not just a device to deceive consumers, but rather have the effect of making them face the truth beyond statistics.
It is self-evident that true communication and sound decision-making only begin when numbers are effectively imprinted on the audience.
I hope that through this book, there will be more "true numerical people" who listen to people beyond numbers and think about a better world.