1 You have no idea of the size of the country you are visiting or how long it will take to travel from the airport to the capital city or beach resort where you are staying.
2 You don't know the population of your home country, nor the country you are visiting.
3 You don't know the race of religion or language of the majority of the people living there.
4 You have no facts to impart to anybody else. You don't know whether what your guide or friend is telling you is true, out of date, or just a guess.
5 You have listed the statistics for yourself or a business presentation but can't remember them or think of a way of making your audience remember them.
Answer
1 Check distances and time travelled from airport to destination. Find out frequency and costs of shuttle bus, taxi, and hotel's own car. (If the hotel offers to send a car is that free? If not what is the cost? Will they meet you at the barrier? How long do they wait if your plane is delayed? Who do you phone if you can't see the driver?)
2 Next time you see useful statistics, note them at the back of your diary on a page headed statistics, or inside the back cover of your diary.
Stories
Tourist Boards are often good sources of information. The marketing department usually knows which country sends the most tourists to their area, and the second and third largest market. When I visited Umbria in Italy, on a press trip, they told me that the English market was high on their list.
When I was writing regularly on honeymoons for magazines such as Brides, I once phoned the tourist board in Cumbria and asked if "Do you have any hotels with four-poster beds? If you do, which one do you recommend?"
The silence on the other end of the line unnerved me. I wondered, have I asked a silly question? Maybe they don't have any, and she doesn't want to admit it. Maybe she doesn't know if they have one.
Eventually, the girl at the other end answered, "We have dozens of hotels. Almost every one will have a four poster bed. Most will have at least two. Some have three or four. Depending on the size of the hotel, some have a four-poster bed in every room. The tourist board represents all the hotels, so it would be hard to pick one."
I had to choose another tactic to narrow down the choice. I asked, "Can you name some Michelin starred restaurants in hotels which also have a four poster bed or honeymoon suite? Can you name a budget bed and breakfast place which also has a four-poster bed. And a third one, mid-way, mid-price. That way I have something for my readers with different budgets."
USA
According to the statistics I found, the latest estimate of US population from 2016 is over 323,000,000. You might like to round up the figures in conversation to more than 320,000,000, more than 320 million. How would you remember? If you or anybody in your family is age 32 that's easy.
Remember 32 - 1. Compare 320,000,000 million (not 32 million but 320 million) compared to one million of any city of one million.
This is a state size to city size comparison. You can also compare two countries, two cities in different countries, city size comparison, or country size comparison.
Population total and Sub-groups
You can also make a similar comparison with numbers of population compared to smaller number or large proportions of goodies, baddies, VIPS, people with special needs, police, nurses, teachers, doctors, students, schoolchildren, city guides.
Compare populations and visitors: residents in summer and winter, hotel occupancy in off-season and school holidays.
Compare general population or number of tourists with availability of restaurants, taxis, buses, tours.
As a memory aid you could make yourself a slide show using the statistics and pice charts or bar charts.
Business and Social Slide Presentations
For a business presentation of slide show make colourful slides, ideally with no more than two pictures and two numbers to compare on one slide.
For a slide show on your travels to a travel club or your family, you might like to start with some visuals including people and animals and trees or rivers or wineries or restaurants or theme parks or hotels.
My favourite slides are the ones which show the numbers of sheep in New Zealand compared to the numbers of people. This is most amusingly compared with pictures of one person and many sheep.
Using Stats in Conversation
You will also find statistics at the back of your airline magazine. This could lead you to explain, I fly with such and such an airline because they go to so many (x number) countries around the world.
Or you might ask: why does your airline go to so many countries (insert number) but not to (Your home city) which has a population of (insert number).
You could start with a picture showing some destinations which speak English or French or Spanish. Or visited by the airline on which you have airmails. Or places which have safari parks. Or whale watching. Or honeymoon suites (dozens of hotels in England's Lake district have four poster beds.).
Have fun. Learn lots.
Handy stats:
US population 320,000,000 (2016 estimate - you can get a more precise figure).
The figures can be subdivided by sex, age, education, income/wealth.
Your city ...
Singapore population ..
Population of London England ...
Population of UK
Tips
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/00 (USA)
https://www.ons.gov.uk
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/publications/publications-and-papers/reference/yearbook-of-statistics-singapore
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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