{"id":215388,"date":"2016-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/improving-comprehension-of-numbers-in-the-news\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T22:31:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T05:31:40","slug":"improving-comprehension-of-numbers-in-the-news","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/improving-comprehension-of-numbers-in-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving Comprehension of Numbers in the News"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>How many guns are there in the United States? What is the incidence of breast cancer? Is a billion dollar budget cut large or small? Advocates of scientific and civic literacy are concerned with improving how people estimate and comprehend risks, measurements, and frequencies, but relatively little progress has been made in this direction. In this article we describe and test a framework to help people comprehend numerical measurements in everyday settings through simple sentences, termed perspectives, that employ ratios, ranks, and unit changes to make them easier to understand. We use a crowdsourced system to generate perspectives for a wide range of numbers taken from online news articles. We then test the effectiveness of these perspectives in three randomized, online experiments involving over 3,200 participants. We find that perspective clauses substantially improve people\u2019s ability to recall measurements they have read, estimate ones they have not, and detect errors in manipulated measurements. We see this as the first of many steps in leveraging digital platforms to improve numeracy among online readers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How many guns are there in the United States? What is the incidence of breast cancer? Is a billion dollar budget cut large or small? Advocates of scientific and civic literacy are concerned with improving how people estimate and comprehend risks, measurements, and frequencies, but relatively little progress has been made in this direction. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13559],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-215388","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-social-sciences","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_edition":"Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2016-05-07","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"2729-2739","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"978-1-4503-3362-7","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"CHI '16","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"450060","msr_publicationurl":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/citation.cfm?id=2858510","msr_doi":"10.1145\/2858036.2858510","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"p2729-barrio","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/p2729-barrio.pdf","id":450060,"label_id":0},{"type":"url","title":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/citation.cfm?id=2858510","viewUrl":false,"id":false,"label_id":0},{"type":"doi","title":"10.1145\/2858036.2858510","viewUrl":false,"id":false,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/citation.cfm?id=2858510"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Pablo J. Barrio","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"dgg","user_id":31618,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=dgg"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"jmh","user_id":32340,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=jmh"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[199571],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[144903],"msr_project":[593965],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":593965,"post_title":"Perspectives Engine","post_name":"perspectives-engine","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2019-06-19 16:20:10","post_modified":"2022-03-21 10:22:44","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/perspectives-engine\/","post_excerpt":"The Perspective Engine is an AI tool that automates the process of putting giant and unfamiliar numbers into familiar context. It is already live in Bing, where it improves the answer to questions like &quot;How big is Afghanistan?&quot; by supplementing &quot;251,827 square miles&quot; with the context &quot;about the size of Texas&quot; for US readers. It puts demographics, nutritional information, fuel efficiency and much more into perspective.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/593965"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/215388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/215388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450054,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/215388\/revisions\/450054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-content-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-content-type?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-product-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-product-type?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-platform?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-download-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-download-source?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=215388"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=215388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}