More or Less: Behind the Stats

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt have been awarded this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.The three are sharing 11 million Swedish kronor, over a million dollars, after being recognised for their work in the area of “innovation-driven economic growth”. But why does this area matter and what did the three economists actually do? We turn the tables on our presenter Tim Harford, to explain all.If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at, let us know: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Lizzy McNeill Reporter: Tim Harford Series producer: Tom Colls Sound mix: Donald MacDonald Editor: Richard VadonImage credit: Johan Jarnestad / The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:The Conservative party conference has been told that millions of people are getting free cars from the government because they have ADHD and anxiety. Is that right?The chair of the Labour party says that only 3% of farmers will be affected by proposed changes to inheritance tax. Is that true?The charity Movember claim that two in five men die too young. What does that really mean?And Tim’s mid-life crisis has manifested itself in a marathon run. We ask a scientist if data can help him finish faster.If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at, let us know: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Nathan Gower Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Gareth Jones Editor: Richard Vadon

In a recent speech to the UN, US president Donald Trump set out some remarkable figures on the proportion of inmates in European prisons who were foreign nationals.Citing statistics from the Council of Europe, he references Greece, Germany and Austria, as having rates around 50%.“In Switzerland, beautiful Switzerland,” he said “72% of the people in prisons are from outside of Switzerland.” These numbers are correct, but why are the percentages so high – particularly in Switzerland?Tim Harford speaks to Professor Marcelo Aebi, a criminologist from the University of Lausanne, who wrote the prisons report for the Council of Europe.If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at, let us know: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Producer: Tom Colls Sound mix: Rod Farquhar Editor: Richard Vadon

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:The Daily Mail says that over half of the UK population live in households that get more in benefits than they pay in tax - is it true?Do some billionaires earn more in a night than the population of Bournemouth earns in a year? New Green leader Zack Polanski seems to think so - we scrutinise the figures.Are older generations getting smarter?Have 77% of Gen-Z brought a parent along to a job interview? Really?If you’ve seen a number you think we should take a look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nathan Gower Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Duncan Hannant Editor: Richard Vadon

When you follow the news, particularly in countries like the UK and the US, it sometimes feels like people are less optimistic about their lives than they were in the past. But a new piece of analysis from polling company Gallup suggests this might just be the local view, not the global one. Using data from the Gallup World Poll, it suggests that “people in more countries are living better lives and expressing more hope for the future” than at any point in the last decade.Tim Harford speaks to Gallup’s Benedict Vigers, who wrote the report, to understand what improvements in the “global median for thriving” really means. If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Series producer: Tom Colls Sound mix: Bob Nettles Editor: Richard Vadon

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:US President Donald Trump claims he has ended seven “unendable” wars. Is that true?Chancellor Rachel Reeves says the UK was the fastest growing economy in the G7 for the first six months of 2025. What do you need to know about that stat?The Daily Mail has described a recent scientific paper as describing a global cancer “explosion”. Is that the whole story?And why have Oxford and Cambridge dropped down a university league table?If you’ve seen a number you think we should take a look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Producers: Nathan Gower and Lizzy McNeill Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Gareth Jones Editor: Richard Vadon

In early February 2025, something strange started happening across US government websites. Decades of data began disappearing from webpages for agencies such as the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Census Bureau. In many cases the entire website went dark. Within a few days some 8,000 government pages and 3,000 datasets had been taken down. Since then, many have been reinstated - but some have not. We speak to Professors Maggie Levenstein and John Kubale to find out why this data was taken away, and why any of it matters. If you spot any numbers or statistical claims that you think we should check out contact: moreorless@bbc.co.uk Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Production Co-Ordinator: Rosie Strawbridge Audio Mix: Neil Churchill

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey says it was easier to deport illegal migrants to Europe when we were in the EU. Is that true?Did the governor of the Bank of England get his numbers wrong on the UK’s ageing population?Why is the price of beef up by 25% in a year?Is it possible to prove that MPs are using AI to write their speeches?If you’ve seen a number you think we should take a look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Lizzy McNeill Producers: Nathan Gower and Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Gareth Jones Editor: Richard Vadon

On September the 10th 2025, right-wing political activist and media personality Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at an event in Utah. In the aftermath, his friend JD Vance, the US Vice President, hosted a special memorial edition of ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’, live from the White House, during which he called for unity, but said that could only be found by “climbing the mountain of truth”. “While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left,” he said. We investigate the statistical evidence around political violence – both in people’s attitudes and the crimes themselves. Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Lizzy McNeill Series producer: Tom Colls Sound mix: Hal Haines Editor: Richard Vadon

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:Nigel Farage says 6.5 million people are on out-of-work benefits – with some benefits up 80% since 2018. Are those numbers right?Do French pensioners really earn more than their working-age compatriots?How is it possible for one kilogram of fish food to produce one kilogram of salmon?And do we really have five senses?If you’ve seen a number you think we should take a look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the world faces a severe labour shortage – 50 million workers by the end of the decade. The boss of the world’s most valuable company thinks humanoid robots will be needed to fill the gap.But is this prediction based on solid evidence?Tim Harford looks at the calculations behind the claim with Rajiv Gupta, a technology expert at Boston Consulting Group, who is the likely source of the 50 million figure.If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Sound mix: Hal Haines Editor: Richard Vadon

Tim Harford looks at some of the numbers in the news. This week:Is it true that interest payments on the UK’s national debt are equivalent to £240 per month for everyone in the country?Reform UK claim that Afghan migrants are 22 times more likely to be convicted of sex offences. Is that number correct?We try to make sense of a claim that one in 10 women are being driven to leave work by their menopause symptoms.And we investigate a claim comparing the speed of a snail and the war in Ukraine.If you’ve seen a number you think we should look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon

Hollywood has given sharks a terrible reputation. But in reality, the finned fish should be far more scared of us, than we of them.Millions of sharks are killed in fishing nets and lines every year.One statistical claim seems to sum up the scale of this slaughter – that 100 million sharks are killed every year, or roughly 11,000 per hour.But how was this figure calculated, and what exactly does it mean?We go straight to the source and speak to the researcher who worked it out, Dr Boris Worm, a professor in marine conservation at Dalhousie University in Canada.Presenter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Annie Gardiner Editor: Richard Vadon

Fully autonomous cars are here. In a handful of cities across the US and China, robotaxis are transporting human passengers around town, but with no human behind the wheel.Loyal Listener Amberish wrote in to More or Less to ask about a couple of safety statistics he’d seen regarding these self-driving cars on social media. These claimed that Waymo self-driving taxis were five times safer than human drivers in the US, and that Tesla’s self-driving cars are 10 times safer. But, are these claims true? We speak to Mark MacCarthy, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Center for Technology Innovation, to find out.If you’ve seen some numbers you think we should look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon

Are office temperatures set too low in the summer for women to be comfortable? This idea has featured in news headlines and comedy videos which describe the summer as a “women’s winter”.But is there evidence behind the claims of a gender bias in air conditioning? To find out, we speak to Gail Brager, Director of the Center for Environmental Design Research at UC Berkeley, and Boris Kingma, a senior researcher at TNO, the Netherlands Applied Research Institute.Presenter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Rosie Strawbridge Sound mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon

In early July, the Mediterranean Sea experienced a marine heatwave. The surface of the water reached temperatures of 30 degrees in some places. A social media post at the time claimed that some of these sea temperatures were so different to the normal sea temperature at this time of year, that the sea was experiencing a “1-in-216,000,000,000-year sea temperature anomaly”. This would suggest that the likelihood of the event was on a timescale far longer than the amount of time the entire universe has existed. Is the claim true? Dr Jules Kajtar, a physical oceanographer from the National Oceanography Centre, takes a look at the statistics. We heard about this story because a listener spotted it and emailed the team. Get in touch if you’ve seen a number you think we should look at. moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Lizzy McNeill Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Rosie Strawbridge Sound mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon

On Friday 1st August the US Bureau of Labor Statistics put out their job report data for August. It included revisions to their estimates for the jobs created in May and June which stated there were 258,000 fewer jobs than they had previously estimated. This news was not received well by the White House. President Trump fired the head of the bureau, Erika McEntarfer, calling the numbers ‘phony, rigged, a scam’ and spreading conspiracy theories that McEntarfer had fudged the data. We speak to economist Michael Strain from the American Enterprise Institute, to understand why the revisions happened and the potential consequences of throwing doubt on one of the US’s most important statistical agencies. If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Production Co-ordinator: Rosie Strawbridge Sound mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Sam Bonham

In June 2022 the United States Supreme Court passed what became known as ‘the Dobbs decision’. In doing so they overturned the long standing constitutional right for women to access abortion in the US. Since then a number of states have banned abortion completely with many others having highly prohibitive rules. You’d expect the numbers of abortions to go down. They haven’t. How is it possible that more people are accessing abortions in a post Dobbs society and why is it not true that states which have total bans have zero abortions per year? Presenter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Production Co-ordinator: Rosie Strawbridge Studio Manager: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon, Bridget Harney.

We’re living through boom-times for Artificial Intelligence, with more and more of us using AI assistants like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok and Copilot to do basic research and writing tasks. But what is the environmental impact of these technologies? Many listeners have got in touch with More or Less to ask us to investigate various claims about the energy and water use of AI.One claim in particular has caught your attention - the idea that the equivalent of a small bottle of drinking water is consumed by computer processors every time you ask an AI a question, or get it to write a simple email. So, where does that claim come from, and is it true?Reporter: Paul Connolly Producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Donald McDonald Editor: Richard Vadon

In the midst of the television coverage of Soccer Aid, a celebrity soccer match organised by Unicef, the audience was told that “one in six children around the world are currently living through war”. Listener Isla got in touch with More or Less to ask whether the claim was correct, so we tracked down the source to an organisation called the Peace Research Institute Oslo.Research director Siri Aas Rustad tells us how they worked out a figure for the number of children living near to a “conflict” and the big differences between that and something most people would think of as “war”.If you’ve seen a number you think we should look at, email the team on moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Giles Aspen Editor: Richard Vadon