Never leave a number alone

I’m not naturally numerate, but having spent half my career in market research, I certainly learned my way around numbers and developed a way to connect with them. And whilst I’m well known for not remembering numbers from one minute to the next, I like to spot patterns in them, join the dots and understand the bigger picture.

Recently, I was looking at the topline results from a client’s annual brand tracker, and the initial numbers were worrying. But when we looked more closely, there had been changes to the sample size and the sampling approach, which affected the stability of the results. The numbers appeared to be telling one story, but the way they had been gathered was part of the story too. As it turned out, there wasn’t anything to worry about; the results were actually fantastic.
Simply not panicking, checking, and thinking about the bigger picture helped us understand what was really going on.

Much like people, numbers really do tell stories if you take a little bit of time with them. And whilst I’m no mathematician or statistician, I’ve also learned that they are beautiful and lonely creatures that pretty much always need to be looked at in relation to another one. They tell the story best when you can compare them to each other, keep an eye on them over time, and understand them relative to something rather than in isolation. Context always matters.

We shouldn’t look at percentages without asking: of what? We have to be careful not to look at market research without checking the base sizes. How many people were interviewed? We shouldn’t look at increases or decreases without asking: since when, and over what period of time? Compared to what? Compared to whom?

And in the fast-paced digital and performance marketing world, we’ve become addicted to the sugar rush of the numbers at our fingertips. We have to be careful of all those often blunt metrics with loads of zeroes behind them: impressions, engagements, VTRs, CTRs, CPLs and CPIs. They’re thrown around as security blankets without any benchmarks against which they can be compared. I think digital metrics are the loneliest numbers of all.

As Hans Rosling wrote in Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, “Never leave a number all by itself.” It’s such a simple and useful way to think.
And that’s my relationship with numbers: I may not remember them, but I know not to leave them alone.