Three ways to make an impact with numbers

Three ways to make an impact with numbers How to make an impact with numbers Numbers can play a crucial role in many of your documents at work. But beware of the trap of thinking that data can speak for itself. You need to do that part. Figures can back up your claims with evidence and help draw attention to your most important facts, trends and comparisons. If what youre writing about is quite dry, theres usually a statistic that will grab your readers attention. Unfortunately, numbers can also have the opposite effect. If they’re poorly explained, they’ll slow your reader to a crawl as they try to work out exactly what youre saying. You risk losing the reader altogether in a sea of context-free figures – and statistics that arent related to their concerns will be no sooner read than forgotten. But there are ways that you can make the most of your figures – and your research – that were going to explore here. Remember these three things and youll be sure to give your numbers real impact. 1. Frame your statistics to show their significance A well-written statistic can capture your reader’s attention by itself. Heres a widely quoted example that dates back to 2007: One in every  £7 spent in retail (in the UK) is spent in Tesco. Its an arresting statistic. But what made it so popular? Lets start with some alternative ways of saying the same thing. Simply talking about the raw numbers of Tescos sales figures wouldnt have had nearly the same effect: Tescos retail sales totalled  £35.6 billion. This won’t mean anything to the average person – you could change the number to  £350.6 billion or  £3.56 billion and many people would accept it as true. (And, more than that, not really know how much they should care.) In other words, without any context, 35.6 billion is just a very large number. Putting the number in context is what starts to give it meaning: Tesco accounted for  £35.6 billion of the  £303.6 billion spent in retail sales in the UK. This gives you a sense of Tesco being a major player in the market. We understand this better now because we have a frame of reference – the overall size of the retail market. But, the numbers are still not framed in a way that most people will directly relate to. After all, most of us dont deal with the retail market – its an abstraction. On top of that, extremely large numbers are hard to understand intuitively. The majority of us do, however, spend money on products and fuel. Saying One in every  £7 spent in retail is spent in Tesco turns this statistic into the very familiar context of the coins and notes in our wallets. At the same time, the problem of talking about big, difficult-to-grasp numbers disappears. Finding your winning examples So how do you do the same thing? As ever, the most important person to consider is your reader. So profile them. By asking what your reader knows and wants, you can more easily set numbers into the appropriate context. For example, lets take these basic statistics: According to data from the Land Registry, house prices in East Sussex rose by over  £18,000 between February 2015 and February 2016. This means that the average home in East Sussex now sells for over  £214,000. The same statistics have different implications depending on whom youre writing for. If you were writing for someone interested in buying a house, you might compare this to the national average house prices. Whereas, if you were writing a report on the cost of living, you could compare this to the median wage in East Sussex. 2. Watch out for unfamiliar units of measurement It’s easy to think of numbers as somehow fundamentally different from words. Of course, in your work documents, they’re alike in one key respect: they both have to make sense to your readers. Whatever specialist area you work in and write about, you always need to be aware of what technical language and jargon might need explaining along the way – and numbers are a magnet for specialist terms. Each domain has its own measures that are widely understood within the field, but widely unintelligible to anyone outside it – from economists measuring Terms of Trade to consultants looking at Net Promoter Score feedback. You can reduce the chances of confusing your readers by thinking about them before you start writing. Do they work in the same field? Do they share your terminology? Are they likely to understand the significance of the measurements? Again, profiling your reader is vital. Youll probably find that, with a little thought, you already have a pretty good idea of what your readers will and wont understand. And if youre still uncertain, try giving a draft of your document to your reader – or to someone you think is similar to them in terms of background knowledge. See if they can understand your technical terms and measurements. If they have trouble, youll either need to explain your terms more clearly or think of a way of rewriting what youre saying in a way that doesnt involve them. 3. Work smart with tables and charts There are three main ways of presenting numbers in your documents: text, tables and charts. These options can complement each other, rather than being strict alternatives. However, in most situations, you will only need either a chart or a table – both is usually overkill. So which should you use? If you need to report lots of precise figures for reference, its better to put them in a table. This saves you from having to write long, hard-to-follow sentences containing all of your values. (Remember too that if most of your readers wont need access to your data, you can always put tables in an appendix rather than in your main document.) Charts and graphs are usually better for showing detailed relationships, relative proportions and trends – but remember that your readers wont be able to read off precise figures. Whichever you use, just including charts, graphs and tables isnt enough. Its very important to interpret them in your text. So always remember to draw out the main implications that are relevant to your reader. For tables, draw out typical values if you want to show a general relationship, or exceptional values if you want to draw attention to a particular figure. For example: Every year, fewer people are using Internet Explorer. Table 1 shows how Internet Explorers usage share has plummeted from 66 per cent in 2009, to just 16 per cent in 2016. For graphs and charts, describe the size and kind of overall trend that youre showing. For example, a graph might show a trough in sales over Christmas or a fluctuating number of support tickets. (For more ways to describe trends, click here.) When youve interpreted graphs and tables well, your reader should be able to understand what they show – and the significance of it – just by reading the text. Putting your interpretation of the graphs or charts data into the body of your text also means you can bring your readers attention to the figures at the relevant point in your argument. Your reader can then test your conclusions by looking at the data for themselves. Keeping your numbers working Although you might think of words and numbers as different languages, in business writing success lies in seeing what the two have in common. Theyre both there to help you achieve the aims and objectives you have for your document – and, ultimately, to meet the needs of your reader. As with all writing, the key to getting your message across is keeping the needs and knowledge of your reader in mind as you write. Do that, and you can be confident that you’ll be making your numbers and research count. Image credit: Jason Salmon / Shutterstock

Case study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 4

Case study - Essay Example Management and control of the economy got remodeled, monetary financial systems were introduced, private banking and hard currency system came into existance, customs regulations were relaxed and there were also attempts to promote foreign trade. All these became part of the new economy. The Revdan enterprise was no more functioning within governmental planning that ensured supply of raw materials and provided marketing facilities. Owing to the collapse of the industrial base of the Commonwealth of Independent States, demand for the products manufactured by Revda declined by upto 80 percent. When Ivan tried to introduce new products using new technologies to get over this, one hurdle he faced was that some technologies could not be handled by the visually disabled. ... 2. Information on the opportunities provided by the changes in the economy can help carry out planning at production and marketing levels. 3. Information on the scope of foreign investment in Revda can help decide upon new avenues of growth 4. Information gathered from an extensive evaluation of the company can help the future planning process. 5. Information on the most successful advertising mix in the new economy will enable effective utilization of money set aside for promotion 6. Information on new technologies and cost-reduction techniques will help redesign the product range and reduce the cost. Q3 Explain (in detail) how you would go about obtaining the information you have identified in q2 Market research is the method by which the data listed in question 2 can be gathered. The research problem will be centered on the marketing failures and challenges faced by the company. A cost-benefit analysis will determine the value of the research as against the cost that goes into it. The value will depend on the degree of newness and hence uncertainty in the environment, the degree of complexity of environment, strategic importance and cost of making wrong decisions, the degree of importance the company attaches to the decisions that have to be made and the caution that cost of research project should never rise above the value of the results. The focus of the research will be to find out consumer demand pattern, new market-savvy technologies, opportunities presented by the changed socio-politico-economic environment, and new and effective marketing strategies for Revda Enterprise. Through obtaining authentic data on these aspects, the objectives of this

Abortion Legalization Importance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Abortion Legalization Importance - Essay Example Recently, extreme opponent of pro-choice group, Joe Walsh, a representative of Illinois, argued that advances in technology and sciences have eliminated the need for abortion to save the lives of women. He claimed that the pro-choice activists are using the health issues of the mother as a tool to defend the abortion favoring policies. However, the statement issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist explained that abortion is necessary in many critical situations of pregnancy in order to save the life of mother. Several situations such as, infections, cases of preeclampsia, heart failure, very high blood pressure lead to the only choice of abortion to save the life of mother. Despite advanced technology and development of science, in many of such cases abortion can’t be avoided. In a way, legalization of abortion helps in such critical cases and medical community is morally and legally justified to perform abortion in order to save the life of mother.As many physicians refuse to perform abortion, the number of safe abortions services is gradually decreasing in many places. Despite legislation of abortion, due to the lack of proper health services, inadequate knowledge of the law, social stigma, and lack of health information, many women undergo through unsafe abortion in clinically unhygienic and unsafe conditions. It is estimated that over 22 million of the world’s annual 47 million abortions are unsafe, and almost 30% of it results in serious medical complications.

Shirley Jacksons The Lottery :: The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Why would a civilized and peaceful town would ever suggest the horrifying acts of violence can take place anywhere at anytime and the most ordinary people can commit them. Jackson's fiction is noted for exploring incongruities in everyday life, and â€Å"The Lottery†, perhaps her most exemplary work in this respect, examines humanity's capacity for evil within a contemporary, familiar, American setting. Noting that the story’s characters, physical environment, and even its climactic action lacks significant individuating detail, most critics view â€Å"The Lottery.† As a modern-day parable or fable, which obliquely addresses a variety of themes, including the dark side of human nature, the danger of ritualized behavior, and the potential for cruelty when the individual submits to the mass will. Shirley Jackson also addresses cruelty by the citizen’s refusal to stand up and oppose â€Å"The Lottery.† Violence and cruelty is a majo r theme in â€Å"The Lottery.† The theme in â€Å"The Lottery† is violence and cruelty. Violence and cruelty is a major theme because there is a lot of violence and cruelty in the world. The Lottery has been read as addressing such issues as the public's fascination with salacious and scandalizing journalism, McCarthyism, and the complicity of the general public in the victimization of minority groups, epitomized by the Holocaust of World War II. The Holocaust was very cruel and violent cause other people didn’t like certain people so they just kill them and their children and still now we have violence and cruelty with wars and people that hate each other.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  On the morning of June 27 of a recent year, the 300 villagers of an American village prepare for the annual lottery in a mood of excitement. The horrible tradition of the lottery is so old that some of its ritual has been forgotten and some has been changed. Its basic purpose is entirely unremembered, but residents are present to take part in it. The children in the village created a â€Å"great pile of stones† in one corner of the stoning square. The civic-minded Mr. Summers has been sworn in and then he hands a piece of paper to the head of each family. When it is discovered the Hutchinson family has drawn the marked slip, each member of the family Bill, Tessie, and the children is given another slip. Silence prevails as suspense hovers over the proceedings. After helplessly protesting the unfairness of the first drawing, Tessie finds that she holds the marked slip.

Closely Examine the Character of Melanie in Hitchcock’s the Birds

The Birds is a psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It centres around Melanie, a young city girl, who journeys into danger into a small coastal town called Bodega Bay to play a practical joke on a potential lover, Mitch. A series of unfortunate Bird attacks follow her and wreck havoc on the town and its inhabitants. As the film progresses, Melanie tries, on several occasions, to go against the social norm of women of the 1950’s; every time she does she gets punished and gradually destroyed until she becomes the dominant ideology.At the start of the film, Melanie seems strong and independent. From the offset she is seen as an individualist. In the first scene she is first seen walking down a street in a fitted jacket and pencil skirt, this was seen as too provocative and was not the usual dress code for a 1950’s woman; the norm would be a dress with either a swing skirt or a poodle skirt. Along with the fitted clothes, Melanie has perfectly groomed hair a nd perfectly painted fingernails; these are signs of her emotional state and will change throughout the film.Also in this scene the audience can hear a wolf whistle from a man directed at Melanie, she turns and smiles, telling the audience that she enjoys male attention and is comfortable and confident in the city environment. In the next scene, Melanie is in a bird shop. This is when Mitch is first seen; when Melanie first sees Mitch she immediately becomes flirtatious and thinks that she is in control of what is happening, when really Mitch is in control as he knows exactly who Melanie is while she does not know who he is.After Mitch plays a practical joke on Melanie in the bird shop, Melanie sets out to speak to him again, and when she finds out that he is not staying in his home in the city but in a small town up the coast, Bodega Bay, she sets out on her own little practical joke. This journey will take her out of her comfort zone, the city, and put her in unknown surroundings and ultimately danger. During the drive, Melanie looks very smug but is unaware that she is journeying into danger.The actions of the two love birds in their cage and the speed of the car are deliberately made to look fake as to lull the audience in to a false sense of security and to mask the danger to come, this ties into the genre of deceit that is seen throughout the film. When Melanie reaches Bodega Bay, it is quite obvious that she is out of place; all the town’s citizens are casually dressed which contrasts with Melanie’s immaculate hair and nails and her fitted clothes. Melanie is treated as novelty by the citizens that she encounters.After she plays her practical joke on Mitch at his house, she races him back to Bodega Bay but he beats her and stands waiting for her. The mood is very light hearted as both characters are smiling but the mood changes to become very serious as Melanie is struck by a seagull on the head. This is the first bird attack and the first time, of many, that Mitch is there to rescue her from danger. After the attack Melanie is composed once again but her gloves are blood stained and she does not wear them again, symbolising that her first layer of protection is gone.This first attack is the start of Melanie’s confident and independent exterior being pecked away by the birds. After the attack Melanie goes back to Mitch’s and meets his mother, a very demanding and controlling woman. In these few scenes where they are together Melanie is seen with high angle camera shots, showing that she is weak and powerless in their home, whilst Lydia is seen with low angle camera shots, demonstrating her power and dominance over the family and Melanie.In their next encounter their roles in the household switch: Lydia becoming frail and helpless whereas Melanie is now dominant and in control. The next significant change in Melanie’s character and emotional state is during the bird attack on the petrol station. M elanie shows an act of independence and defiance by taking shelter in a Telephone Box, away from the security of Mitch and other men, but when she tries to get out again she is attacked by the birds, eventually the glass panels of the Telephone box shatter, representing her fragility.High angle shows, once again, that Melanie is weak and powerless. The paint on her fingernails is still intact but her hair is not as groomed as it started out, signifying that her emotional state and independence has been damaged again and she has been punished for her act of defiance. For the second time, Mitch has to come and rescue Melanie from the birds, showing that she is becoming more and more dependable on the security of men, especially Mitch. During the penultimate attack by the birds Melanie’s state of mind changes nce again: she has regained her strength and has taken over the role of mother of the family. This is shown by low angle camera shots and in her actions. When Mitch’ s sister, Cathy, gets sick, it is Melanie, not the mother, that takes her to the kitchen. However, these moments of defiance are short lived, for after the birds appear to have left the house, Melanie hears bird sounds coming from the attic and climbs the stairs, on her own, to see what it is.She hesitates at the door of the attic, there is a close up of her hand and her nails are still intact, and when she does open the door, she does so only to find a flock of birds which attack her mercilessly. This, her last act of independence, ends in disaster and her destruction as an independent woman. For the final time Mitch comes to rescue Melanie from the birds. Melanie’s destruction is symbolised by her looking dishevelled and wrapped up in bandages. Mitch then carries Melanie to the car, demonstrating Melanie’s total dependence on Mitch.Melanie’s destruction is finally symbolised by an extreme close up of her nails, which are completely broken and chipped. The ways in which Melanie changes over the course of The Birds, her frame of mind could be compared to a yo-yo. At the start she was completely independent and self sufficient, but during different parts of the film she either lost some of her independence or gained some. By the end of the film, Melanie ends up being the polar-opposite of what she started out to be. At the end she was totally dependent on Mitch and had lost all independence. Making her the dominant ideology of a woman of the 1950’s.

What Is the Steady-State Theory in Cosmology

Steady-state theory was a theory proposed in 20th-century cosmology to explain evidence that the universe was expanding but still retain the core idea that the universe always looks the same, and is therefore unchanging in practice and has no beginning and no end. This idea has largely been discredited due to astronomical evidence that suggests the universe is, in fact, changing over time. Steady-State Theory Background and Development When Einstein created his theory of general relativity, the early analysis showed that it created a universe that was unstable (expanding or contracting) rather than the static universe that had always been assumed. Einstein also held this assumption about a static universe, so he introduced a term into his general relativity field equations called the cosmological constant. This served the purpose of holding the universe in a static state. However, when Edwin Hubble discovered evidence that distant galaxies were, in fact, expanding away from the Earth in all directions, scientists (including Einstein) realized that the universe didnt seem to be static and the term was removed.​ The steady-state theory was first proposed by Sir James Jeans in the 1920s, but it really got a boost in 1948 when it was reformulated by Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, and Hermann Bondi. There is a dubious story that they came up with the theory after watching the film Dead of Night, which ends exactly as it began. Hoyle particularly became a major proponent of the theory, especially in opposition to the big bang theory. In fact, in a British radio broadcast, Hoyle coined the term big bang somewhat derisively to explain the opposing theory. In his book Parallel Worlds, physicist Michio Kaku provides one reasonable justification for Hoyles dedication to the steady-state model and opposition to the big bang model: One defect in the [big bang] theory was that Hubble, because of errors in measuring light from distant galaxies, had miscalculated the age of the universe to be 1.8 billion years. Geologists claimed that Earth and the solar system were probably many billions of years old. How could the universe be younger than its planets? In their book Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang, cosmologists Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok are a bit less sympathetic to Hoyles stance and motivations: Hoyle, in particular, found the big bang abhorrent because he was vehemently antireligious and he thought the cosmological picture was distrubingly close to the biblical account. To avoid the bang, he and his collaborators were willing to contemplate the idea that matter and radiation were continually created throughout the universe in just such a way as to keep the density and temperature constant as the universe expands. This steady-state picture was the last stand for advocates of the unchanging universe concept, setting off a three-decade battle with proponents of the big bang model. As these quotes indicate, the major goal of the steady-state theory was to explain the expansion of the universe without having to say that the universe as a whole looks different at different points in time. If the universe at any given point in time looks basically the same, there is no need to assume a beginning or an end. This is generally known as the perfect cosmological principle. The major way that Hoyle (and others) was able to retain this principle was by proposing a situation whereas the universe expanded, new particles were created. Again, as presented by Kaku: In this model, portions of the universe were in fact expanding, but new matter was constantly being created out of nothing, so that the density of the universe remained the same...To Hoyle, it seemed illogical that a fiery cataclysm could appear out of nowhere to send galaxies hurtling in all directions; he preferred the smooth creation of mass out of nothing. In other words, the universe was timeless. It had no end, nor a beginning. It just was. Disproving the Steady-State Theory The evidence against the steady-state theory grew as new astronomical evidence was detected. For example, certain features of distant galaxies (such as quasars and radio galaxies) werent seen in nearer galaxies. This makes sense in the big bang theory, where the distant galaxies actually represent younger galaxies and nearer galaxies are older, but the steady-state theory has no real way to account for this difference. In fact, its precisely the sort of difference that the theory was designed to avoid. The final nail in the coffin of steady-state cosmology, however, came from the discovery of the cosmological microwave background radiation, which had been predicted as part of the big bang theory but had absolutely no reason to exist within the steady-state theory. In 1972, Steven Weinberg said of the evidence opposing steady state cosmology: In a sense, the disagreement is a credit to the model; alone among all cosmologies, the steady state model makes such definite predictions that it can be disproved even with the limited observational evidence at our disposal. Quasi-Steady State Theory There continue to be some scientists who explore the steady-state theory in the form of quasi-steady state theory. It is not widely accepted among scientists and many criticisms of it have been put forth that have not been adequately addressed. Sources Gold, Thomas. Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Scribners Sons, Encyclopedia.com, 2008. Kaku, Michio. Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos. 1st Edition, Doubleday, December 28, 2004. Keim, Brandon. Physicist Neil Turok: Big Bang Wasnt The Beginning. Wired, February 19, 2008. Paul J. Steinhardt. Department of Physics, Princeton University, 2019, Princeton, New Jersey. Steady state theory. New World Encyclopedia, October 21, 2015. Steinhardt, Paul J. Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang. Neil Turok, Fifth or Later Edition edition, Doubleday, May 29, 2007. The Doc. Fred Hoyle. Famous Scientists, 2019.

Themes And Explanations Of Tasmania s Museum Of Old And...

THEORY ASSIGNMENT 2 AMY WHITE THE RED QUEEN EXHIBTION MONA â€Å"DELUXE SUICIDE SERVICE† By artist Meghan Broody â€Å"IF I HAD A WORLD OF MY OWN, EVERYTHING WOULD BE NONSENSE. NOTHING WOULD BE WHAT IT IS, BECAUSE EVERYTHING WOULD BE WHAT IT ISN T. AND CONTRARY WISE, WHAT IS, IT WOULDN T BE. AND WHAT IT WOULDN T BE, IT WOULD. YOU SEE?† ALICE - LEWIS CARROL (ALICE S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS QUOTES, N.D.) This essay will explore the themes and explanations of Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art’s new exhibit ‘The Red Queen’ and a chosen piece, ‘Deluxe Suicide Service’, 1994; an intense mixed media sculpture by the artist Meghan Broody. Lewis Carrol was very creative in putting some order and sense in his†¦show more content†¦The Red Queen’s character is seen as an antagonist, the opposing force to Alice’s adventures. Upon their first encounter in this story the queen explains the rules of her kingdom as like the rules of a game of chess, as a story and game of advancement and promotion. Alice is like a pawn piece and can move up the board in such a way that she too can become the queen, like as in chess the queen can move effortlessly in whatever manner she likes. The queen perturbs Alice into an endless run with Alice having no real direction of where she is heading and meeting other strange characters along the way whic h develops her idea of the impossible being possible. Elizabeth Pearce, a curator and writer for MONA states; â€Å"the Red Queen exhibition asks us to consider whether doing something without a seeming purpose is the product of us, or whether it actually contributes to changing us.†(The Red Queen arrives at MONA 2013) This exhibition, takes us into the realms of the science behind the theme. The evolutionary concept that in the earlier 20thcentury scientist’s believed there was an end point, a goal to the evolutionary process. A parallel story of Alice put forth this idea when the Red Queen tells Alice: â€Å"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.†( The Red Queen Hypotheses n.d.) Then this