Are you listening when we do the numbers?

Listeners might be surprised at the controversy surrounding one of our best-known Marketplace segments. It’s not a hot-button political issue, but rather a daily segment that simply states indisputable fact. It’s The Numbers, where we tell you what’s going on with the S&P, the Dow and various stock market indicators. It generates a surprising amount of listener mail, with strong opinions about what numbers we should include and how.

So we’ve decided to see what researchers think about how we do The Numbers. This is not about which indicators to include, which is a different question. Instead, we want to explore how to best present The Numbers, which involved seeing what researchers have learned about how our brains deal with numbers generally.

Click the player above to hear what Marketplace’s Mark Garrison found out.