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New Library Materials

Items added during: November 2025

New Library Materials Archive

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Collection Close-up: Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers, by Chip Heath and Karla Starr [print | e-book | e-audiobook]

How much bigger is a billion than a million?

Well, a million seconds is twelve days. A billion seconds is…thirty-two years.

Understanding numbers is essential—but humans aren’t built to understand them. Until very recently, most languages had no words for numbers greater than five—anything from six to infinity was known as “lots.” While the numbers in our world have gotten increasingly complex, our brains are stuck in the past. How can we translate millions and billions and milliseconds and nanometers into things we can comprehend and use?

Author Chip Heath has excelled at teaching others about making ideas stick and here, in Making Numbers Count, he outlines specific principles that reveal how to translate a number into our brain’s language. This book is filled with examples of extreme number makeovers, vivid before-and-after examples that take a dry number and present it in a way that people click in and say “Wow, now I get it!”

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Transportation Research Record

TRB’s journal Transportation Research Record is now published in digital-only format. Full text is available to MnDOT employees. Check out new articles or sign up for an alert at Transportation Research Record.