More or Less

Last week, Ukraine launched drone attacks against three data centres owned by Russian tech giant Yandex. After these attacks Yandex announced that they were struggling to maintain their services.This led to widespread claims that Russian disinformation campaign on social media ha

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:(00:40) First Minister John Swinney has claimed that Scottish pensioners are set to lose £2000, with the money going to fund English social care. We gently suggest he might like to consider the existence of the B

A viral video circulating online claims the population of China is actually a billion people lower than the UN and China say. A billion is big number, you'd think the Chinese would notice if that many were missing - and the claim is certainly false.However, as the team dug into t

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: (00:42) Is the UK uniquely miserly when it comes to the state pension? That’s the story a viral social media post is telling - but have they adjusted to account for complicated structural differences between

How much could climate change cost the global economy? That would be a very useful thing to know, and scientists have developed statistical models that they think can help give a reasonable answer. These involve finding the patterns in economic data associated with temperature ch

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:(00:40) Does the UK account for nine out of ten of the poorest regions in Northern Europe? It’s a classic story of devil meets detail where the true meaning is the geographical inequality we met along the way.(07

US president Donald Trump has claimed in a speech to the UN that the US and Venezuela combined now have 60% of the world’s oil. 100% of the team on More or Less were confused.What measurement was the president using to get to this figure? Barrels of oil produced a day? Reserves

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:(00:42) Frustrated economists have been left rending their garments and howling in the streets after the UK’s ‘productivity puzzle’ - a decade-long head-scratching, soul-searching conundrum - disappeared with a c

Are fruit and vegetables less nutritious than they used to be? And is declining soil quality to blame? Loyal listener Sarah got in touch to ask us to investigate an interesting quote from Dr Karan Rajan in a BBC news story. “We know our soil is not as nutrient dense as it was dec

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:(00:33) Are crumbling teeth the number one reason children attend A&E? We drill down into the dental health of the nation’s kids.(08:20) The US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has claimed that a quarter of pha

Every year, climate scientists keep a close eye on data coming out of a particular area of the Pacific Ocean. They’re trying to measure the scale of a climate phenomenon - the El Niño event or effect. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon where ocean surface temperatures rise

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:(00:38) The number of people being recalled to prison after early release in England and Wales is rising sharply. Why?(07:37) Is the UK millionaire an endangered species? We ask Duncan Weldon - he’s like David At