Marques Brownlee Taught Me How to Present Numbers
A common best practice that can enhance the information we deliver.
Number Without Context
Last week, I watched MKBHD class on Skillshare about how he makes his Youtube videos. I found unexpected yet exciting insight. It was advice from his Professor, which he always applies in every video he makes.
“Anytime you’re presenting some number, some information. Never give that number without context … I’ve applied this pretty much consistently the entire time I made a video” — Marques Brownlee.
Sound familiar, right? We may already know this from our school, university, or even from work. And maybe for experienced writers and journalists, this principle is quite common. But for me, I haven't taken this seriously to apply it in my daily life and in the content I produce.
Marcus Brownlee mentions this in only a few minutes in his class. But, it triggers my curiosity. So, I dig deeper again on this subject to seek real-world examples and understand the importance more clearly.
Here's is what I've learned.
Better Understand
Let's take a look at this fact,
“Facebook revenue for 2020 is $85.9 billion.”
For most people, this statement doesn't mean anything. All we know is that it's a lot of money. Isn't it?
The truth is, we don't know. That depends on the context.
Depending on who your audience is and what message you want to tell, providing context will help the audience better understand.
Now, let's take a look at different examples. I found another article from Business of Apps that also mentions Facebook revenue. If I take a look on their site, most articles are written with a topic of apps. That's why they structured the sentence like this,
“Facebook generated $85.9 billion revenue in 2020. Approximately $60 billion came from the Facebook app.” — Business of Apps
Besides the revenue, we can also understand that a considerable portion of income came from Facebook Apps.
On the other hand, Macrotrends emphasize growth, how the revenue compared to the previous year.
“Meta Platforms annual revenue for 2020 was $85.965B, a 21.6% increase from 2019.” — Macrotrends.
It helps us understand that $85.9 billion in Facebook revenue is better than last year. This kind of information may be suitable for investors, for someone who cares about company growth.
The same number, the same piece of information can have different meanings to the audience depending on how we put context. So, it is used to help the audience understands better.
Get Creative
I also found out that we can get creative in telling a story with numbers. Reading big numbers is hard to grasp. We need to put some references, some scale that a lot of us can relate. It can make the information more impactful.
Here are some excellent examples,
“In the URL of each YouTube video is the 11-character video ID, unique for each video. Can they ever run out? Just how many videos can YouTube handle?”
Tom Scott answers a question that we never bother to ask. How many people do you think wondering and want to know the answer to these questions? But it seems like the answer appeals to a lot of people. The way he put context is this number makes all of us understand how big it is.
This is how he delivers the answers,
“… 73,786,976,294,838,206,464 videos, that is enough for every single human on planet earth to upload a video every minute for around 18.000 years! Youtube plan ahead. Can they run out of URLs? Technically, yes. Practically, no” — Tom Scott
Amazing! Isn't it?
Another good example is from the most popular videos of James Jani. He uses visuals to put some context on how big Jeff Bezos's net worth is. You can take a look at the first 30 seconds of his videos below.
No wonder his video is getting so much view. This first 30 seconds is one of many elements that make his video go viral.
So, this is my understanding of this subject. I found that this principle is essential. And if we can perfectly apply this, the information we deliver can have a significant impact.
