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Making Numbers Count
Making Numbers Count
Oct 5, 2024 9:24 AM

Author:Chip Heath,Karla Starr,Kathe Mazur

Making Numbers Count

Brought to you by Penguin.

Making Numbers Count is a lively, practical, first-of-its-kind guide to turning cold, clinical data into a memorable story.

Until very recently, most languages had no words for numbers greater than five - anything from six to infinity was known as 'lots'. While the numbers in our world have become increasingly complex, our brains are stuck in the past. Yet the ability to communicate and understand numbers has never mattered more. So how can we more effectively translate numbers and stats so that the data comes alive?

In Making Numbers Count, Chip Heath and Karla Starr argue that understanding numbers is essential - but humans aren't built to understand them. Drawing on years of research into making ideas stick, they outline six critical principles that will give anyone the tools to communicate numbers with more transparency and meaning. Using concepts such as simplicity, concreteness and familiarity, the authors reveal what's compelling about a number and show how to transform it into its most engaging form.

Whether you're interested in global problems like climate change, running a tech firm or a farm, or just explaining how many Cokes you'd have to drink if you burned calories like a hummingbird, this book will help math-lovers and math-haters alike translate the numbers that animate our world.

© Chip Heath, Karla Starr 2021(P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

Concise, breezy and pragmatic.

—— Wall Street Journal

A unique popular math book... [that] delivers a painless, ingenious education in how to communicate statistics and numbers to people who find them confusing... Packed with tables, anecdotes, and amusing facts, the narrative makes math accessible.... Astute advice for businesspeople and educators.

—— Kirkus Review

I couldn't stop telling people about this book. Wise and joyful, it genuinely changed the way I thought about learning - and it left me bursting to put it into action

—— Tim Harford, author of 'Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy'

In this well-researched and beautifully written book, Sarah Kessler provides a very accessible but sophisticated analysis of the “gig economy”. While vividly telling moving stories about individual hardships and achievements, it provides a broad perspective that helps us see the gig economy as the latest manifestation of the long-running historical struggle over power, security and risk between different classes. It is essential reading for anyone who is interested in understanding the future of our economy and society.

—— Ha-Joon Chang, author of 23 THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT CAPITALISM

Kessler illuminates a great divide: For people with desirable skills, the gig economy often permits a more engaging, entrepreneurial lifestyle; but for the unskilled who turn to such work out of necessity, it’s merely ‘the best of bad options.’

—— Harvard Business Review

Kessler’s timely book explores the personal, corporate and societal stories behind a massive tech-driven shift away from permanent office-based employment.

—— Books of the Month , Financial Times

Silicon Valley is turning work into a frictionless transaction between buyer and seller, says the author of this provocative new volume . . . Read it because the gig economy affects everyone – employers, employees and consumers.

—— Book of the Month , Harper’s Bazaar

A clear-eyed and illuminating book.

—— San Francisco Chronicle

Gigged offers a timely and in-depth look at the promise and peril of the gig economy from one of the first journalists to recognize how big and important this new market would become . . . Sarah Kessler goes behind the statistics to tell the stories of people making a living (sometimes just scraping by) as gig economy workers. Gigged is smart, entertaining, moving, and at times even inspiring. Sarah Kessler writes like a dream. If you want to know how work is changing and how you too must change to keep up, you must read this book.

—— Dan Lyons, author of DISRUPTED

A deep look at . . . our “civilization based on work” – and what’s so often unsatisfying about living in it.

—— Washington Post

Argued convincingly

—— Fortune

A fair-minded analysis of the ever-morphing worldwide labour force

—— Kirkus Reviews

Sarah Kessler has a good claim to have been there at the beginning of a truly revolutionary moment: the start of the thing we now call the gig economy . . . Gigged does a valuable service in tracking the twists and turns of the workers of the gig economy.

—— City AM

Well crafted . . . a multitude of anecdotes supported by data and extensive reporting.

—— Forbes

The workforce is changing, and Sarah Kessler is here to explain its evolution. In Gigged, she looks at the rise of the “gig economy” and what that means for not only employers and employees but the future of society.

—— Books of the Month , Bustle

Alongside her intimate portraits of these workers’ lives, Kessler picks apart the founding mythology of the gig economy . . . Kessler’s book makes it more clear than ever that some solution to the fragmenting of traditional employment is direly needed.

—— UnHerd

Engaging . . . Kessler approaches her topic with even-handedness and rigour.

—— Maclean’s

Brilliantly in-depth not only in the explanations of the gig economy, but in the narratives of people who work gigs as well.

—— Washington Times

As well-reported, and at times as emotionally wrenching, as Amy Goldstein’s Janesville . . . In facing . . . the fraying of the social contract between employer and employee, Sarah Kessler's work in Gigged makes one thing increasingly clear: we must get busy building a new one that benefits all sides of that relationship, and the society around it.

—— Editor’s Choice , 800 CEO Read

Goes under the bonnet of the gig economy.

—— What CEOs Are Reading , Management Today

Kessler’s recent book Gigged is all about [the] desire for independence . . . Kessler investigates the liberating ethos and terrible trade-offs of this new economy by following several people working in such positions. She discovers why the revolution in “independent contractor” work – which comes without guarantees for minimum wages, paid vacation, or health benefits – is paradise for one slice of the population, but has been disappointing, and in some cases devastating, for others.

—— Quartz

For those interested in inquiries into modern (and future) work, there’s Gigged by Sarah Kessler, an analysis of the gig economy.

—— Books of the Year , Buzzfeed News

Looks at the potential of the gig economy and ultimately the problems it bears.

—— Books of the Year , Fast Company
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