More Or Less: Behind The Stats

Has Austerity caused 120 thousand deaths in the UK and does God hate men?

Using statistics to compare world records in athletics and swimming.

Health risks for Presidential hopefuls, falling inflation, shark deaths and salary claims

Are eight people a day murdered in Cape Town and is that number unusually high?

Are black women five times more likely to die in childbirth? Plus making pop music.

Has it increased significantly since President Bolsonaro took office in January?

Challenging the idea of six billion deaths due to climate change; plus what pets eat.

Are they really 85 percent worse than last year?

Are forest fires in Brazil the worst in recent times? What is the state pension worth?

Were millions of trees planted in just one day in Ethiopia?

Was your A Level grade correct? Plus were 350m trees planted in one day in Ethiopia?

Re-inserting a caveat and discussing a really cool numbers trick.

Do immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans in the United States?

With misinformation so easy to spread, how can it be stopped or challenged?

Taking a statistical look at what expectant mothers should avoid.

How medical testing on just men causes problems.

We look at politicians’ claims that sanctions are to blame for Zimbabwe’s difficulties.

On this week’s More or Less, Ruth Alexander looks at the numbers involved with the two world cups that are going on at the moment. Are more men than women watching the Women’s World Cup and how accurate is the Cricket World Cup rule of thumb that suggests if you double the score after 30 overs you get a good estimate of the final innings total?Producer: Richard VadonImage: Cricket World Cup Trophy 2019 Credit: Getty Images/ Gareth Copley-IDI

We questioned the death count of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in last week’s More or Less podcast. In the end, Professor Jim Smith of Portsmouth University came up with an estimate of 15,000 deaths. But we wondered how deadly nuclear power is overall when compared to other energy sources? Dr Hannah Ritchie of the University of Oxford joins Charlotte McDonald to explore.Image:Chernobyl nuclear plant, October 1st 1986 Credit: Getty Images

The recent TV miniseries ‘Chernobyl’ has stirred up debate online about the accuracy of its portrayal of the explosion at a nuclear power plant in the former Soviet state of Ukraine. We fact-check the programme and try and explain why it so hard to say how many people will die because of the Chernobyl disaster.Image: Chernobyl nuclear power plant a few weeks after the disaster. Credit: Getty Images