Explain how the same statistic can be framed in different ways to create different emotional impacts, using Black Death mortality estimates as a case study.
A number can feel like the most objective, trustworthy part of any text -- but HOW a true number gets framed is itself a rhetorical choice, meaning a choice made to produce an effect on the reader, not just to inform. Learning to notice framing does not mean distrusting every statistic; it means asking a few sharp questions before letting a number do your feeling for you.
The Black Death, which reached Europe in 1347, killed an estimated one-third to one-half of the entire population within about four years -- genuinely one of the most severe demographic disasters in recorded history, and every framing below is defensible. "Up to half of Europe died" emphasizes the most extreme possible scale. "Historians estimate roughly one in three Europeans died" personalizes the same range differently, into something closer to a person you might know. "Europe's population did not fully recover for over a hundred years" swaps the immediate shock of a death toll for a slower, longer-lasting consequence. All three are honest. All three make you feel the disaster differently.
Mastery looks like: They can take one true statistic and produce at least two different honest framings of it, explaining the different emotional effect each produces.
Common stumbles: Treating any reframing of a statistic as automatically dishonest, rather than recognizing that framing choices can all be true while still differing in emphasis.
See it visually
Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.