Arctic Security

Over a decade ago John Allen Paulos, Professor of Mathematics at Temple University and author of multiple books on the intersection of numbers and narratives, published an intriguing article in the New York Times wherein he observed, "In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating statistics we generally have an opposite inclination to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled." Stories and data are both important of course, and while it may not be surprising that we treat them in different ways it is critical for policy advocates to know that as humans we have evolved to have a preference for stories over data. This was illustrated in a 2007 experiment that showed that a story alone beat both data and a combination of story and data in soliciting donations for a worthy cause. Another quote from Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick, drives the point home : "In the average one-minute speech, the typical student us...