More or Less

If, like me, you're a maths nerd I recommend More or Less on BBC Radio 4 for your listening pleasure. In it Tim Harford the "Undercover Economist" explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life.

There's a podcast available too so I tend to listen to it while walking around the village. To give you a flavour of it this week's programme, which I listened to today on the way to a meeting at Milton Country Park, included:

• The poor reporting of the issue that woman were getting pregnant while using a popular contraceptive implant (despite what the papers implied it turns out it's more reliable that just about everything else including vasectomy!)

• Whether VAT is or isn't progressive, something about which I've wibbled myself.

• "Proofiness" - the dark arts of mathematical deception.

• Psychic animals ability to predict the results of sports matches, be they octopuses or monkeys.

But my favourite was how tall Lower Loxley Hall is, based on the length of Nigel's scream as he fell to his death in The Archers a few days ago. Turns out that the 3.5 second scream suggests he fell 60m, which about the height of York Minster, which in turns suggest the hall is about twenty stories high. Wow, that's some stately home!