Breathe New Life Into A Hot or Over-Discussed News Story By Using Simple Math Tools

When blogging about a hot topic, it can be difficult to portray the story in a way that sets you apart from the millions of other blogs which are discussing the same thing. But with the help of a few simple online tools and some basic math, you can make people see the story from an entirely different perspective.

For example, a recent study showed that 12,000 laptops are stolen or lost every week… just in US airports. Although 12,000 might sound like a big, meaningless number, it’s much more dramatic to say this would represent a new laptop every day… 5 days a week… for the length of an average person’s entire working career.

There are also online tools that can help you twist numbers around to show their true meaning. Storagepipe Solutions has an online calculator tool that lets you calculate the live downtime costs that a company would incur if their datacenter ever failed.

Downtime Cost Calculator is the useful tool.  A tool like this could be very helpful when discussing a major virus or hacker attack, or when demonstrating the effects of a catastrophic event such as a flood or fire. All you need is a bit of corporate information that can often be found in press releases or their Wikipedia profile.

If you decide to use an online calculator tool like this, you might want to pick one with an EMBED code, so that it can be placed on your web site. This makes the story that much more interactive.

There are also many similar tools that can help with discussing personal finance, investing or mortgages.
Also, you may want to show numbers as a different demonization of currency. There’s nothing exciting about a professional athlete who makes $23 million a year. But when you phrase it as the equivalent of earning a new high-end sports car every day… the article gets a whole new meaning.

Another helpful tip would be to take the numbers from the story, and lay them out on a chart… compared to other similar numbers. Everyone loves charts, and it’s far more personalized than some over-used stock-image.

Just about any dull news story can be made more interesting, just by adding a bit of flair to the numbers. Try it out on your blog and see how readers respond.