Downloader: NumberQuotes helps you liven up presentations with quotes about numbers

Saturday, May 1, 2010

NumberQuotes helps you liven up presentations with quotes about numbers

Giving presentations is hard. Looking out at all of the bored, yawning faces barely paying attention to yet another PowerPoint presentation, you may wonder how you can make your presentation stand out?

Well, just like everyone else, you're probably still going to use PowerPoint, but at least you can spice up your content with some interesting quotes. If you have any numbers that you need to give, hit up NumberQuotes for a pithy comment about the number in your presentation.

The example given on NumberQuotes' homepage is: €œLast year our industry changed by 50 billion dollars, that'€™s the GDP of Serbia. That's not bad, and I could see that actually being a point of interest. Are all of NumberQuotes' quotes that good, though? Let's give it a try.

For my example, I chose the number 32, which happens to be my hockey jersey number. Interestingly, NumberQuotes actually provides quotes, not only for the exact number that you enter, but also for a few numbers before and after your choice. So, the quotes in this example start at 30, and go up to 35. Since I'm only interested in the ones for 32, let's have a look at a few of my options:

32: The population of Ronneby city, Minnesota, USA in 2008
32: The Alexa rank of linkedin.com
32 pennies stacked on top of each other would be as high as 1.10 Burger King Whoppers
32 quarters stacked on top of each other would be as high as 0.98 McDonald's Big Macs
32 quarters would weigh as much as 0.99 soda cans
32 iPhones would buy 3.17 MacBooks

Okay, so my example seems pretty random, but that's because I chose only a few of the many possible options. Most of them are simple calculations where X (height / weight / cost) of object A equals Y (height / weight / cost) of object B. Try it for yourself, and you'll see what I mean. Most of those are not all that interesting or useful, particularly when the resulting numbers are not round.

On the other hand, it's kind of interesting that the average wage for Nuclear technicians in the USA is 32.17 US dollars per hour.

NumberQuotes shoots a fire-hose of possible quotes at you for each number, and it's your job to filter through and find the interesting nuggets. They are there, if you're willing to look for them.