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Show Me the NuMberS Show Me the N uMberS Designing tables and Graphs to enlighten SecoND eDitioN StepheN Few Analytics Press burliNGaMe, caliForNia Analytics Press po box 1545 burlingame, ca 94011 SaN 253-5602 www.analyticspress.com email: [email protected] © 2012 by Stephen c. Few all rights reserved. protected under the berne convention. publiSher: Jonathan G. Koomey copY eDitor: Nan wishner coMpoSitioN: bryan pierce coVer DeSiGN: Stephen Few photoGraphY: John Fernez priNter aND biNDer: c&c offset printing company reproduction or translation of any part of this work in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 united States copyright act without the expressed permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. requests for permission or further information should be addressed to analytics press at the address or url above. iSbN-10: 0-9706019-7-2 iSbN-13: 978-0-9706019-7-1 this book was printed on acid-free paper in china. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 if we’ve done well in life, we have fellow travelers to thank. No one succeeds alone. in my life’s story, many of the heroes are teachers. Several extraordinary educators from elementary school through graduate school invited me into a world of never-ending wonder and gave me the confidence to make it my own. More than the content of their lessons, what influenced me most were the ways they found to connect with me as a person who was worthy of their time. their remarkable kindness, commitment to education, and practiced skill helped me become the person, and the teacher, that i am today. if i’ve done and can continue to do for others what these teachers have done for me, my life has meaning. Oh, the thirst to know smaller than a single grain. how many! Time became a number. The hunger Light was numbered to know and no matter how it raced with sound how many its velocity was 37. stars in the sky! Numbers surrounded us. We spent When we closed the door our childhood counting at night, exhausted, stones and plants, fingers and an 800 slipped toes, grains of sand, and teeth, beneath the door our youth we passed counting and crept with us into bed, petals and comets’ tails. and in our dreams We counted 4000s and 77s colors, years, pounded at our foreheads lives, and kisses; with hammers and tongs. in the country, 5s oxen; by the sea, added to 5s the waves. Ships until they sank into the sea or madness, became proliferating ciphers. until the sun greeted us with its zero Numbers multiplied. and we went running excerpt from the poem The cities to the office, “ode to Numbers” were thousands, millions, to the workshop, by pablo Neruda, wheat hundreds to the factory, Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda, of units that held to begin again the infinite translated by Margaret Sayers peden within them smaller numbers, 1 of each new day. (1995). university of california press.