More or Less Podcast
Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
Episodes to download
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WS More or Less: The things we fail to see
Mon 10 Jun 2019
The hidden influences that a make a big difference to the way the world works.
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Are married women flipping miserable?
Fri 7 Jun 2019
Measuring happiness, university access in Scotland, plus will one in two get cancer?
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WS More or Less: Volcanoes versus humans
Mon 3 Jun 2019
Does Mount Etna produce more carbon emissions than humans? We check the numbers.
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Hay Festival Special
Fri 31 May 2019
What does it mean to say that the UK is the fifth largest economy in the world?
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WS More or Less: Florence Nightingale 鈥� recognising the nurse statistician
Mon 27 May 2019
How collecting data about the dead led the famous nurse to promote better sanitation.
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Eurovision and fact-checking Naomi Wolf
Fri 24 May 2019
The stats behind making a successful song, plus misunderstanding Victorian court records.
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Making music out of Money
Mon 20 May 2019
A musical interpretation of a chart depicting the yield-curve of American bonds.
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Heart deaths, Organised crime and Gender data gaps
Fri 17 May 2019
Are more people dying from coronary disease? Plus how we need more economic data on women
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Sex, coal, missing people and mice
Fri 10 May 2019
Are we having less sex? And what happened to coal? (These items are unrelated.)
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Avengers - Should we reverse the snap?
Mon 6 May 2019
Exploring the economic impact of losing half the world鈥檚 population
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Nurses, flatmates and cats
Fri 3 May 2019
We look into sobering statistics about nurses and some curious claims about house-sharing
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Bernie Sanders and the cost of having a baby
Mon 29 Apr 2019
Did Bernie Sanders get the cost of giving birth right?
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Hottest Easter, Insects, Scottish villages
Fri 26 Apr 2019
Should we be surprised Easter Monday was the hottest recorded?
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The economic impact of mega sporting events
Fri 19 Apr 2019
Major sports events and the benefits to the local economy.
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Where is Scotland鈥檚 highest village?
Mon 15 Apr 2019
A battle is brewing in the Southern Scottish uplands between two rival villages.
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Rounding up the weed killer cancer conundrum
Mon 8 Apr 2019
We examine the cancer-causing potential of the weed killer glyphosate
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Chess cheats and the GOAT
Mon 1 Apr 2019
What a statistical analysis of chess moves can teach us about this ancient game.
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Is Mansa Musa the richest person of all time?
Mon 25 Mar 2019
Is the West African king, Mansa Musa, the richest person who ever lived?
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Day light saving time and heart attacks
Mon 18 Mar 2019
Does the sudden loss of an hour of sleep raise the risk of having a heart attack?
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The gender gap in tech
Sat 9 Mar 2019
Are women really less likely than men to be hired for jobs in tech?
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How To Make Your Art Work More Valuable
Fri 22 Feb 2019
Die, sell on a sunny day, place your work a third of the way through the auction.
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WS More or Less: When maths mistakes really matter
Mon 18 Feb 2019
Tim Harford talks to Matt Parker on how simple maths mistakes can cause big problems.
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Climate Change, Victorian Diseases, Alcohol
Fri 15 Feb 2019
Tim Harford on climate change, Victorian diseases, maths mistakes and alcohol consumption
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WS More or Less: From the archives: Groundhogs and Kings
Mon 11 Feb 2019
Assessing the accuracy of a Groundhog; How many English people have right royal relatives?
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Teen Suicide; Brexit Business Moves; Wood-Burner Pollution
Fri 8 Feb 2019
Tim Harford finds untrue a recent report that there is a 'suicidal generation' of teens.
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WS More or Less: You have 15,000 likes!
Mon 4 Feb 2019
A listener doubts her popularity on the dating app Tinder. We investigate the numbers.
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Holocaust Deniers; Venezuelan Hyperinflation; Tinder Likes
Fri 1 Feb 2019
Tim Harford on Holocaust deniers; food prices in Venezuela, and dating app statistics
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WS More or Less: Is Suicide Seasonal?
Sat 26 Jan 2019
Tim Harford asks which times of the year are riskiest for suicide.
