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PODCAST

More or Less

Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life

science mathematics

All Episodes

15:24

Questioning the Chernobyl disaster death count

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2019/06/21

The recent TV miniseries ‘Chernobyl’ has stirred up debate online about the accuracy of its portrayal of the explosion at a nuclear power plant in the former Soviet state of Ukraine. We fact-check the programme and try and explain why it so hard to say how many people will die because of the Chernobyl disaster.Image: Chernobyl nuclear power plant a few weeks after the disaster. Credit: Getty Images

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9:10

WS More or Less: Dealing with the Numbers of Cancer

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2019/06/14

How one woman used statistics to help cope with cancer.

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9:06

WS More or Less: The things we fail to see

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2019/06/10

The hidden influences that a make a big difference to the way the world works.

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23:33

Are married women flipping miserable?

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2019/06/07

Measuring happiness, university access in Scotland, plus will one in two get cancer?

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9:05

WS More or Less: Volcanoes versus humans

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2019/06/03

Does Mount Etna produce more carbon emissions than humans? We check the numbers.

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27:51

Hay Festival Special

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2019/05/31

What does it mean to say that the UK is the fifth largest economy in the world?

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10:59

WS More or Less: Florence Nightingale – recognising...

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2019/05/27

How collecting data about the dead led the famous nurse to promote better sanitation.

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24:01

Eurovision and fact-checking Naomi Wolf

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2019/05/24

The stats behind making a successful song, plus misunderstanding Victorian court records.

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9:05

Making music out of Money

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2019/05/20

Data visualisation is all the rage, but where does that leave the old-fashioned values of audio? Some data visualisation experts are starting to explore the benefits of turning pictures into sound. Financial Times journalist Alan Smith plays his musical interpretation of a chart depicting the yield-curve of American bonds.Image: Human heart attack, illustration Credit: Science Photo Library

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27:57

Heart deaths, Organised crime and Gender data gaps

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2019/05/17

Are deaths from heart disease on the rise?This week the British Heart Foundation had us all stopping mid-biscuit with the news that the number of under 75s dying from cardiovascular disease is going up for the first time in half a century. It sounds like bad news – but is it?Does Huawei contribute £1.7billion to the UK economy?People were sceptical that the Chinese telecom company could contribute such a large amount to the UK economy. We take a deeper look at the number and discuss whether it is

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15:06

Sex Every Seven Seconds

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2019/05/13

We revisit some classic topics from past years. We hear which statistics about sex you should trust, and which are less robust. Do men think about sex every seven seconds? Plus, did the arrival of royal baby Princess Charlotte really contribute to the British economy?

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27:36

Sex, coal, missing people and mice

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2019/05/10

Sex Recession This week it was reported that British people are having less sex than they used to. Similar statistics are cropping up elsewhere in the world too. But one US stat seemed particularly stark: the number of young men having no sex at all in the past year has tripled in a decade. But is it true? No coal power for a week There were many reports in the newspapers this week saying the UK has set a new record for the number of consecutive days generating energy without burning any coal. So

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10:18

Avengers - Should we reverse the snap?

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2019/05/06

*Spoiler-free for Avengers: Endgame* At the end of Avengers: Infinity War film the villain, Thanos, snapped his fingers in the magical infinity gauntlet and disintegrated half of all life across the universe. The Avengers want to reverse the snap but would it better for mankind to live in a world with a population of less than 4 billion? Tim Harford investigates the economics of Thanos with anthropologist Professor Sharon DeWitte and fictionomics blogger Zachary Feinstein PHD. Image: The Avengers

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23:45

Nurses, flatmates and cats

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2019/05/03

Nurse suicide ratesThere were some worrying figures in the news this week about the number of nurses in England and Wales who died by suicide over the last seven years. We try to work out what the numbers are really telling us. Are 27 million birds killed a year by cats?Newspapers reported this week that 27 million birds are killed by cats each year. We find out how this number - which might not really be "news" - was calculated.How rare are house shares?A listener got in touch to say she was

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9:32

Bernie Sanders and the cost of having a baby

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2019/04/29

Bernie Sanders, a Senator in the United States and one of the front-runners in the campaign to be the Democratic presidential candidate, said on Twitter that it costs $12,000 to have a baby in his country. He compared that figure to Finland, where he said it costs $60. In this edition of More or Less, Tim Harford looks at whether Sanders has got his figures right. With Carol Sakala of US organisation Childbirth Connection and Mika Gissler of the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland

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27:44

Hottest Easter, Insects, Scottish villages

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2019/04/26

Was it a surprise that Easter Monday was so hot?A heatwave struck the UK over Easter – and in fact Easter Monday was declared the hottest on record in the UK. But listeners asked - is it that surprising that it was the warmest when the date fell so late in April? We crunch the numbers supplied by the Met Office.InsectageddonInsects live all around us and if a recent scientific review is anything to go by, then they are on the path to extinction. The analysis found that more than 40% of insect

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8:59

The economic impact of mega sporting events

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2019/04/19

The Olympic Games and the football World Cup, two of the biggest events in the world which are each hosted every four years, are big business. And it costs a lot of money to host them, and a lot of the money comes from public funds. In this week’s edition of More or Less, we’ll be finding out – after all the sporting activities are over – how realistic were those economic predictions? Producer: Darin Graham Presenter: Charlotte McDonald Editor: Richard Vadon Picture Credit: Fang Guangming/Southern

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8:58

Where is Scotland’s highest village?

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2019/04/15

A battle is brewing in the Southern Scottish uplands between two rival villages. How can statistics help determine which village should take the crown? Wanlockhead and Leadhills both lay claim to the title of Scotland’s highest village but there can only be one winner. More or Less attempts to settle the age old dispute once and for all. Presenter: Phoebe KeanePicture: A village in the Southern Scottish uplands. Credit: Jan Halfpenny

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8:58

Rounding up the weed killer cancer conundrum

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2019/04/08

A recent scientific review claims the weed killer glyphosate raises the risk of developing the cancer non-Hodgkin lymphoma by 41 percent. But deciding what causes cancer can be complicated and there are lots of people and organisations on different sides arguing for against this. So in this edition of More or Less, we look at the disagreements and how the authors of the review came up with the results. With cancer epidemiologist Dr Geoffrey Kabat, Toxicologist Dr Luoping Zhang and statistician Sir

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10:04

Chess cheats and the GOAT

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2019/04/02

Who is the greatest chess player in history? And what does the answer have to do with a story of a chess cheating school from Texas? In this week’s More or Less, the BBC’s numbers programme, David Edmonds finds out what a statistical analysis of chess moves can teach us about this ancient board game. Presenter: David Edmonds Producer: Darin GrahamImage: A Chess Board Credit: Getty Images

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