Dear Group,
Some days ago I listened to a program segment on National Public Radio on KPBX on suicide and our declining average lifespan in the United States. I like numbers and I firmly believe there is truth to be found in properly gathered data and statistical analysis. The word “statistics” has been in use since the mid 17th century. It is derived from the word “state” to describe demographic and economic data gathered by the government to better understand the state. Statistical analysis of the data the state gathered came later with the development of probability theory and the branch of mathematics we call statistics.
When we hear a comprehensive presentation of a topic on a radio segment, what do we retain? I came away from the KPBX presentation on suicide with only two things, a number and story. Since I was driving at the time I couldn’t take notes, and, to my great frustration, I cannot locate an audio copy of the presentation I heard…so I’m left with my fragmentary memory.
The number I did retain was 70,000. My recollection from the radio program was 70,000 was the current annual number of suicides in the U.S. It’s a big number and getting bigger. But as a stand alone statistic, does it leave an impression? The mental stickiness of the number 70,000 can be improved if the listener remembers there are around 35,000 annual automobile fatalities in the United States or remembers roughly 58,000 Americans died in the entire Vietnam War. I had to look up both those comparison numbers. Stop and think, do you have a mental reference point for the number 70,000?
In contrast, I retain a story, a vivid image from the KPBX presentation, an image that keeps popping up in my mind, even though the details of the story presented may themselves be fragmentary. The narrator said with the extraordinary number of deaths it was becoming more and more common that dead bodies must be transferred to a funeral home from one small town to another twenty-five or thirty miles down the road. Why? Because the refrigerator space that was once adequate in the funeral homes of many small towns is now often full.
I grew up a half a block from a funeral home. We lived next door to the funeral director’s family. My uncles lived on a farm and were occasional grave-diggers for the country cemetery across the road. I vividly remember the turmoil in my extended family when I was five and my grandmother died. I cannot get out of my mind the image of a family grieving being told the body of their loved would have to be shipped down the road because there’s no more room…
Such is the power of story…and the failure of numbers to impress and stick with us.
When a story is presented there usually little argument. When a statistic is presented the reflex of the listener is often to attempt to deny or diminish the significance of the data rather than engage over what the data means. Data is essential to truth and understanding–but it needs to serve a supporting role to our values and our experience.
We need to tell stories. Stories sink in where statistics often bounce off. We were programed this way. It is not by accident that Jesus taught in parables, not Roman census numbers. Every Sunday morning people in this country go to church and hear stories from the pulpit. That fact was not lost on the Republican/Libertarians when, especially in 1990s under Gingrich, some of the church-going public began to hear stories welding christianity to Republican politics.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry