More or Less: Behind the Stats

The podcast discusses VAT, sloppy reporting, and Jack the 'psychic' monkey. Topics include contraceptive failure rates, VAT impacts on jobs, deceptive numbers, and the importance of Bayesian reasoning in decision-making.

Tim Harford and the More or Less team explore 2010 in numbers. Happy New Year to all our listeners.

Explore the financial crisis parallels in a retelling of 'A Christmas Carol' where Ebenezer Scrooge faces the ghosts of banking past, present, and future. Dive into the dilemma of 'Too Big to Fail' banks and reflections on banking ethics and the need for reform.

Local government budgets are being cut. More or Less looks at how the pie is sliced and finds everything depends on Wokingham (yes, really). Plus: we take a look at inflation and consult the magic More or Less monkey.

We look at the numbers behind the increase in the cap on undergraduate tuition fees in England. Are the changes fair and progressive? Are they dropping future students into a deep hole of debt? Or are they both?

Tim Harford and the More or Less team examine the micromort measure of risk and official statistics on sexual identity.

Exploring welfare incentives and lifestyle choices, declining bird populations due to cats, unique comparisons using PMI, controversy around cats' impact on birds, and a mathematical race at the Great North Run.

Who earns more: private or public employees? And are your trousers flattering you?

More or Less looks at how maths is taught in schools today and it asks what the population of the world be if WWI had never happened.

How reliable are life expectancy figures? Can cycling ever be safer than driving? And, what can maths tell us about guerilla insurgencies?