WS More or Less: Does San Francisco have more rough sleepers than Britain?
Are the shocking statistics true? and how do you count people who don't wish to be found?
Episodes
More or Less: Behind the Stats
Tim Harford and the More or Less team try to make sense of the statistics which surround us. From BBC Radio 4
Episodes
New hospitals promised, aid to Ukraine, and bacon sandwiches
Dissecting the government’s hospitals announcement and President Trump’s Ukraine claims.
WS More or Less: Who fought in World War 1?
Were a third of those that fought for Britain in WW1 black or Asian?
Austerity Deaths, C-Sections and being struck by lightning
Has Austerity caused 120 thousand deaths in the UK and does God hate men?
WS More or Less: Peaty v. Bolt: Which is the greatest world record?
Using statistics to compare world records in athletics and swimming.
Dementia, inflation and shark deaths
Health risks for Presidential hopefuls, falling inflation, shark deaths and salary claims
WS More or Less: Cape Town murders
Are eight people a day murdered in Cape Town and is that number unusually high?
Maternal deaths, taxi driver earnings and statistical pop music
Are black women five times more likely to die in childbirth? Plus making pop music.
WS More or Less: Deforestation in Brazil
Has it increased significantly since President Bolsonaro took office in January?
Climate deaths, austerity and pet food
Challenging the idea of six billion deaths due to climate change; plus what pets eat.
WS More or Less: Amazon forest fires
Are they really 85 percent worse than last year?
Amazon fires, state pension and American burgers
Are forest fires in Brazil the worst in recent times? What is the state pension worth?
WS More or Less: Ethiopia’s 350m trees in a day
Were millions of trees planted in just one day in Ethiopia?
Exam grades, Chernobyl and Ethiopian trees
Was your A Level grade correct? Plus were 350m trees planted in one day in Ethiopia?
Mice and mind blowing maths
Re-inserting a caveat and discussing a really cool numbers trick.
Immigrant Crime Rate in the US
Do immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans in the United States?
The spread of fact-checking in Africa
With misinformation so easy to spread, how can it be stopped or challenged?
Pregnancy prohibitions – the evidence
Taking a statistical look at what expectant mothers should avoid.
Missing women from drug trials
How medical testing on just men causes problems.
Zimbabwe’s economy: Are sanctions to blame?
We look at politicians’ claims that sanctions are to blame for Zimbabwe’s difficulties.
Two World Cups: Football and Cricket
On this week’s More or Less, Ruth Alexander looks at the numbers involved with the two world cups that are going on at the moment. Are more men than women watching the Women’s World Cup and how accurate is the Cricket World Cup rule of thumb that suggests if you double the score after 30 overs you get a good estimate of the final innings total? Producer: Richard Vadon Image: Cricket World Cup Trophy 2019 Credit: Getty Images/ Gareth Copley-IDI
Is nuclear power actually safer than you think?
We questioned the death count of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in last week’s More or Less podcast. In the end, Professor Jim Smith of Portsmouth University came up with an estimate of 15,000 deaths. But we wondered how deadly nuclear power is overall when compared to other energy sources? Dr Hannah Ritchie of the University of Oxford joins Charlotte McDonald to explore. Image:Chernobyl nuclear plant, October 1st 1986 Credit: Getty Images
Questioning the Chernobyl disaster death count
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
WS More or Less: Dealing with the Numbers of Cancer
How one woman used statistics to help cope with cancer.
WS More or Less: The things we fail to see
The hidden influences that a make a big difference to the way the world works.
Are married women flipping miserable?
Measuring happiness, university access in Scotland, plus will one in two get cancer?
WS More or Less: Volcanoes versus humans
Does Mount Etna produce more carbon emissions than humans? We check the numbers.
Hay Festival Special
What does it mean to say that the UK is the fifth largest economy in the world?
WS More or Less: Florence Nightingale – recognising the nurse statistician
How collecting data about the dead led the famous nurse to promote better sanitation.
Eurovision and fact-checking Naomi Wolf
The stats behind making a successful song, plus misunderstanding Victorian court records.