STATISTICS. To make statistical facts comprehensible and interesting is
usually a difficult problem for the inexperienced writer. Masses of
figures generally mean very little to the average reader. Unless the
significance of statistics can be quickly grasped, they are almost
valueless as a means of explanation. One method of simplifying them is
to translate them into terms with which the average reader is familiar.
This may often be done by reducing large figures to smaller ones.
Instead of saying, for example, that a press prints 36,000 newspapers an
hour, we may say that it prints 10 papers a second, or 600 a minute. To
most persons 36,000 papers an hour means little more than a large
number, but 10 papers and one second are figures sufficiently small to
be understood at a glance. Statistics sometimes appear less formidable
if they are incorporated in an interview or in a conversation.

In undertaking to explain the advantages of a coöperative community
store, a writer was confronted with the problem of handling a
considerable number of figures. The first excerpt below shows how he
managed to distribute them through several paragraphs, thus avoiding any
awkward massing of figures. In order to present a number of comparative
prices, he used the concrete case, given below, of an investigator
making a series of purchases at the store.

(1)

Here's the way the manager of the community store started. He
demonstrated to his neighbors by actual figures that they were
paying anywhere from $2 to $8 a week more for their groceries and
supplies than they needed to. This represented the middlemen's
profits.