What to do when making an impact hinges on our ability to make large numbers tangible … 

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Each year, more than 8 million children die due to poverty.

That's a huge number.

But how large is it, really?

The human mind has no easy way to see that number.

For our brain, it doesn't make much difference whether it's 8

million or, let's say, 80,000.

Both is basically a lot.

Things change when we translate the numbers into dimensions we can

relate to from our everyday life.

8 million per year means that every four seconds a child dies due to poverty.

Basically, during the time it takes you to listen to this sentence,

a child has died due to poverty.

Four seconds is an easy to grasp value.

Four seconds is easy to experience.

It has a clear meaning in our everyday life and therefore it

makes the abstract specific.

It's still the same information, but it's much more tangible.

Even more so when you amplify it and support it with,

say a finger snap, like so.

Every time I snap, a child dies due to poverty.

It's hard to see 8 million children.

But it's easy to imagine one, which is precisely what most of us

do when we hear that finger snap.

With each finger snap we see a child.

Translating difficult numbers into values that make sense in our everyday life also

makes it a lot easier for our audiences to understand what the numbers mean.

It makes it a lot easier to relate to the info we're trying to convey.

And that allows us to make a bigger impact with what we have to say.