More or Less: Behind the Stats

Ed Sheeran and the mathematics of musical coincidences

After beating a plagiarism claim in court, musician Ed Sheeran said that musical coincidences...

• 0
• 0
• 3 days

Rail strikes, tyre pollution and sex statistics

Do rail workers really earn £13,000 a year more than nurses? As rail strikes severely hit...

• 0
• 0
• 6 days

How often do people have sex?

Magazine articles and advice columns are commonly littered with spurious statistics about how...

• 0
• 0
• 10 days

Maternity litigation, stars, bees and windowless planes

The former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt says that the cost of maternity litigation claims in...

• 0
• 0
• 13 days

Hannah Fry: Understanding the numbers of cancer

British mathematics professor and broadcaster Hannah Fry has spent many years trying to explain...

• 0
• 0
• 17 days

Employment puzzle, pyramids and triplets

The UK has a low unemployment rate, and a large number of people who are not working right now...

• 0
• 0
• 20 days

Are girls starting puberty earlier?

In the 1980s, Dr Marcia Herman-Giddens was one of the first people to notice that girls were...

• 0
• 0
• 24 days

Jubilee costs, fuel poverty and imperial measures

Is the government really spending a billion pounds on the Jubilee, as some have claimed? We...

• 0
• 0
• 27 days

Noisy Decisions

Nobel memorial prize winner Daniel Kahneman is one of the world’s most famous...

• 0
• 0
• 1 month

Germany’s excess deaths, Eurovision and teacher shortages

Some recent, and surprising, estimates from the World Health Organisation suggested that the UK...

• 0
• 0
• 1 month

Are just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions and how stressed are South Africans?

In the fight against global warming we’re constantly told to do our bit to reduce green...

• 0
• 0
• 1 month

Did the WHO get some of its excess death estimates wrong?

The World Health Organisation recently released some new estimates of the global death toll of...

• 0
• 0
• 1 month

Have the oceans become 30% more acidic?

Although the climate-changing effects of Carbon Dioxide emissions are well known, they are...

• 0
• 0
• 2 months

Sweden’s polarising pandemic response

When much of Europe went into lockdown at the start of pandemic, Sweden’s lighter touch...

• 0
• 0
• 2 months

Understanding India through Data

How do you go about understanding a country with a population as diverse as it is vast? Data...

• 0
• 0
• 2 months

Subitising and simplifying: how to better explain numbers

Have you ever looked at a numerical claim and thought ‘what on earth does that mean?’...

• 0
• 0
• 2 months

Did tea-drinking cut deaths in the Industrial Revolution?

Could an explosion in tea-drinking explain a decline in deaths in England during the industrial...

• 0
• 0
• 3 months

Will the war in Ukraine cause a global wheat shortage?

As the Russian Invasion of Ukraine continues, the effects ripple around the rest of the world....

• 0
• 0
• 3 months

Pizza and Nuclear War

The War in Ukraine has reminded the world how easily conflict might escalate into a Nuclear War....

• 0
• 0
• 3 months

Does the UK take in more refugees than other European countries?

As the war in Ukraine continues, Reuters has reported that some 2.3 million people have been...

• 0
• 0
• 3 months