Winning The Room

SECTION 4Developing: Numbers and Labels

For any data‐driven presentation, numbers will be front and center. You'll have numbers explaining the work you did, numbers summarizing what you found, and numbers quantifying the potential impact of those findings. This section will discuss how to make those numbers audience friendly. Here are some of the concepts discussed in this section:

• Use the proper level of precision.
• Format numbers to match the context.
• Clearly label all numbers shown.
• Explicitly label the scale of charts.
• Check that your numbers actually make sense.

With the simple tricks found in this section, you will enable the numbers that you show to convey the message you need to convey while minimizing the effort required for your audience to consume and interpret the information. Your goal is to communicate to your audience the larger trends, patterns, and outcomes your work uncovered while using the fewest numbers possible.

How you label and format your numbers will have a big impact on how your presentation looks and how it is comprehended. Of course, the better your presentation looks and the more it is comprehended by the audience, the more likely it will be successful!

Tip 47: Use Consistent Precision

When you show numbers, you want to make it as easy for your audience to digest the numbers as possible. One way to do this is to ensure that your tables have a consistent format across rows and columns. Having a mix of formats for the same type of data makes it ...