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 the stats, a strange story emerged - which suggests the official data on births and fertility may not be quite as reliab

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 national systems? Reader, they have not. (07:23) In a podcast feud nobody saw coming, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Tucker Carlso

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 changes - and then applying them to the future changes that are predicted as the globe warms. In 2024, a scientific paper

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. (07:54) An article in The Economist has claimed that a single donkey charity in Devon received more in annual donations t

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 of oil in the ground? It’s hard to make any of these stats add up. To find out whether there was any truth in the claim,

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 click of the fingers and a tweak of the methodology. Should the Office for National Statistics have acted sooner? We ask

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 decades ago,” he said. “So a carrot in the 1950s will be far more nutrient-rich than a 2026 carrot.” Is this really true? w

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 pharmaceuticals used in the UK come from Israel. We check the facts. (13:20) Is former Education Secretary Michael Gove r

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, transferring warmth from the ocean to the atmosphere. This can drive up global temperatures but also play havoc with we

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 Attenborough, but for economics. (14:21) A viral graph seems to show that Europe is having a record low year for wildfir

Can it really be true that every shuffle of a deck of cards is unique? Mathematician and stand-up comedian Matt Parker claims that every time you do a shuffle, the cards have never been in that order before. But how can he be so confident? Matt came into the studio armed with a deck of cards and some very big calculations to back up his big assertion, and introduced us to the mind-splitting mathem

What's this, an extra podcast? Has Christmas come early? No, the Bayeux Tapestry has instead returned to England for the first time in almost 1000 years. To mark the occasion, we've compiled six snack-sized stats all about the Norman invasion of England to help you have something to talk about in various social situations such a pub quizzes, movie nights and awkwardly quiet lifts. From horses to t

How do different countries compare, in terms of the amount of time that workers take as sick leave? Loyal listener Dave got in touch to ask us to look at a surprising statistic he saw in the news – that the average German takes 19.5 days of sick leave per year. “This is extremely hard to believe,” he wrote. We track down the – highly reliable – source of the claim, and look at the differences betw

Sometimes world events of massive practical significance lead our minds towards some lovely impractical thoughts. So it was for loyal listener, Nigel. Pondering the conflict in Iran, and the maritime ownership of the Straits of Hormuz that has become its focus, his mind wandered to an altogether bigger and - honestly - far less important question. “How much of the world surface actually doesn't be

As part of their mandate to stop 'waste, fraud and abuse' in federal government spending, DOGE, the department of Government Efficiency, made large cuts to the amount of money the US spent on foreign aid. The task force, headed by Elon Musk, effectively dismantled the US's largest foreign aid agency, USAID - cancelling many of its programmes and absorbing the remainder into the State Department. T

Earlier this year, South African-born tech tycoon Elon Musk briefly became the world’s first dollar trillionaire. This prompted loyal listener Stephen to email the More or Less team, to ask us to investigate something his daughter had been pondering: For all Musk’s vast wealth, what does it equate to as a proportion of all the wealth in the world? How much of all the money does Elon Musk have? We

If you had a choice between instantly receiving £50,000 or a 50% chance to win £1m, which would you pick? When YouGov asked exactly that question to people in the UK, 73% said they would take the £50,000, while 21% opted for the 50/50 chance of winning £1m. As you may or may not have imagined, this finding provoked outrage on Twitter, with people saying the UK appeared incredibly risk averse. “Thi

What is the error in the calculation Donald Trump used to work out his new tariffs? What happened when the government ordered a recount of bobbies on the beat? When is a tax freeze not a tax freeze? And do redheads really have a 25% higher tolerance to pain? Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Charlotte McDonald Producers: Nathan Gower and Liz

The crime rate in London has been cropping up regularly on social media and in political discussions - US president Donald Trump has claimed that crime in the city is ‘through the roof’. But what does the data tell us? Professor Matt Ashby, from University College London’s Centre for Global City Policing, has put together statistics that allow you to start to compare crime rates between cities aro

As the 2026 World Cup approaches its end, what is the biggest factor in who wins? Is it extraordinary moments of attacking magic? Gritty defensive organisation? Or is it all just a question of luck and random chance? We look at how mathematicians and analysists make sense of chaos, xG and unpredictability in the beautiful game. If you've seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at