🔢More or Less

More or Less: Behind the Stats. A weekly radio programme that takes numbers from the news and public life and asks whether they are true, fair and big. On air since 2001.

Full title More or Less: Behind the Stats. A radio programme that takes a number somebody has said in public and asks three things: is it true, is it fair, and is it big? About half an hour in season, with short editions in between. It has been running since 2001, which means it is older than my first notes system and has outlasted all four.

Hale Winter recommended it at the end of the first lecture, on 21 January, in the tone of a man recommending vegetables. I subscribed on the tram home. It became the weekly habit that started with the course, and it is the only homework I have never missed: Wednesdays, washing up.

What it has taught me that the course has not:

• Is that a big number? The question is a method. Divide by the population, by the days in a year, by last year's figure. Most frightening numbers are small once they have a denominator and some dull ones are enormous.
• Where did it come from? A number in a headline was once a sentence in a report with three caveats attached, and each retelling drops one.
• A wrong number is usually not a lie. Someone rounded, someone compared two things measured differently, someone mixed up a percentage and a percentage point.
• They read out corrections to their own programme. I have started doing the same in the newsletter and nobody has unsubscribed.

For ♦️ Statistics for decisions and 00. Statistics for Product Decisions I Hub.

Heard in 2025: 41

What It Prompted: 🧭 Five questions to ask a chart · 🎭 The Sceptical Statistician · 💎 A number without its base rate is a story · 💎 A chart is an argument and can be cross-examined · 📝 Issue 37 - Base rates for product people · 🔍 A statistics reading group at Halden · 🧪 Report every metric with a range for a month · 📕 How to Lie with Statistics