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Covid cases rising, a guide to life’s risks, and racing jelly-fish
A jump in the number of UK Covid-19 cases reported by the government has led to fears coronavirus is now spreading quickly again. What do the numbers tell us about how worried we should be? Plus a gu…
Published on 5 years, 3 months ago
Schools and coronavirus, test and trace, maths and reality
As children return to school in England and Wales, we hear about what we know and what we don’t when it comes to Covid-19 risks in school settings. What do the numbers tell us about how well test and…
Published on 5 years, 4 months ago
Covid plasma therapy
Donald Trump says allowing the emergency use of blood plasma therapy for coronavirus patients will save “countless lives” and is “proven to reduce mortality by 35%”. We look at the evidence. Amid tal…
Published on 5 years, 4 months ago
A-level algorithms, poker and buses
We unpick the A-level algoshambles, discover why 1.3 million Covid tests disappeared from the government's statistics last week, and for reasons that may become clear, we examine the chance of being …
Published on 5 years, 4 months ago
Belarus’ contested election
Autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko claims to have won a landslide in the country’s presidential elections. But how can we know what really happened? Tim Harford delves into the numbers behind t…
Published on 5 years, 4 months ago
Hawaiian Pizza, obesity and a second wave?
Covid-19 cases are rising in the UK - is it a sign of a second wave of the virus? We’re picking apart the data and asking how concerned we should be both now and as autumn approaches. Scotland is und…
Published on 5 years, 4 months ago
Melting Antarctic ice
One More or Less listener has heard that if all the ice in Antarctica melted, global sea levels would rise by 70 metres. But it would take 361 billion tonnes of ice to raise the world's sea levels by…
Published on 5 years, 4 months ago
Covid in Africa
Do we have enough data to know what’s happening on the continent? We talk to Dr Justin Maeda from the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Ghanaian public health researcher Nana Kofi Quakyi about tr…
Published on 5 years, 5 months ago
Data in the time of cholera
Tim Harford speaks to Steven Johnson about William Farr and the birth of epidemiology in the 1800s.
Published on 5 years, 5 months ago
Covid misconceptions and US deaths
Tim Harford talks to statistician Ola Rosling about his research into misconceptions about Covid-19. And an update on the epidemic in the US.
Published on 5 years, 5 months ago