Five questions for any number in a headline.
Print it, fold it, keep it in the pocket the phone lives in. Fill one line per headline.
The companion to The Number in the Headline. Use your browser’s print command; the page is set to print clean on one sheet.
Headline:
- Out of how many? The count tells you something happened; only the denominator tells you your risk.
- Up from what? Ask for the baseline. A forty percent rise from a record low may still be the safest decade measured.
- Where does the axis begin? Bars are measured from zero. A line is measured by its range, so read the change in the numbers, not the steepness.
- Who else walks with it? “Linked to” is not “causes.” Name the third thing that could move both.
- Who did not get to answer? The winners’ stories are the ones you hear; the losers are the denominator you never see.
The worked example
Two ways of saying the same thing, both true, only one chosen for the headline. Same population, same time window.
| Before | After | Relative change | Absolute change | The honest sentence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 in 100 | 3 in 100 | +50% | +1 in 100 | One more person in a hundred. |
| 1 in 1,000,000 | 2 in 1,000,000 | +100% (“doubled”) | +1 in a million | From almost nothing to almost nothing. |
| 2 in 10,000 | 1 in 10,000 | −50% (“halves your risk”) | −1 in 10,000 | One fewer in ten thousand. |
Relative change = (after − before) ÷ before. Absolute change = after − before, in the same units the risk was counted in. The headline almost always prints the bigger-looking one. Write both, then decide whether anything moved.
The books behind it are on the Ledger shelf. The Ledger study is the longer road.
drink deep
One note per episode.
The video and the sources behind it, so you can check the work instead of taking our word.
One note per episode — the video and its sources — and nothing else. Unsubscribe in one click. Privacy.