Stories not statistics

Stories are better than statistics. Disclaimer: I studied maths and work with numbers.

Today I read lots of statistics, and a story. The story stuck in my head.

Read these statistics from water.org:

• 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies
• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
• People living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.
• An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.

Now compare that to this video of Justin Zoradi tellig his story of "These numbers have faces":

What stuck with me is the stories, the specifics.
To me the statement "one person will die because they can't even get access to clean drinking water in a city" is more powerful than if you change the number to one million.

We have to start by understanding a small problem well, by letting it affect us, by letting it change us.
Statistics don't change people. Stories do.

A statistic is one story affecting more than one person.