Why Every Good Listicle Is Actually Two Listicles

Let me demonstrate

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

It’s a trick I learned from Mrs. Jameson, the best teacher I ever had. She was a data science professor and a fantastic writer. “Data is just numbers. People don’t understand numbers, tell them a story, or they won’t listen to your findings. Numbers are boring, but stories are convincing.”

But you can always tell two versions of a story:

• 99.9% of the world’s population is safe.
• 8 million people suddenly died yesterday.

It works even better with listicles because of their poetic format. They were made to be duplicated and tell (at least) two sides of any story.

All of Mrs. Jameson’s assignments asked us to answer the question twice

First, we had to find the correct answer and explain how we got there (in detail). We had to tell a story.

Then, we had to introduce a small mistake in our reasoning and arrive at the opposite conclusion. The smaller the mistake, the better the grade.

Once, I got two As for the same assignment because I hid my mistake so well that it looked like the problem had two answers, one opposing the other.