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Tim Harford explains the numbers and statistics used in everyday life

Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life

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13/05/2011

BBC Radio 4 - More or Less, 13/05/2011

Investigating the public sector pay premium, statins and the 'decline effect'.

Investigating the numbers in the news, including the public sector pay premium, statins and the disturbing finding that many scientific results appear to fade over time.

In More or Less this week:

Are public sector workers paid 43 per cent more than those in the private sector, as the think tank Policy Exchange claimed this week? 

If all over 55-year-olds were given cholesterol and blood pressure-lowering drugs - as researchers recently suggested - how many people would take those drugs unnecessarily?

Jonah Lehrer on the "decline effect", the disturbing finding that many scientific results appear to fade over time.

Kelly Greenhill from Tufts and Harvard universities tries to calculate the civilian death toll in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

Is modern science too complicated to be left to the scientists? Darrel Ince on a scandal in academia.

And we try to patch things up with poor old Fireman Dibble.

Producer: Richard Knight.

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