Â鶹Éç

Tim Harford reveals how we can evaluate the statistical claims that surround us with confidence, curiosity and a healthy level of scepticism.

Statistics are vital in helping us understand the world. We see them in the papers and on social media, and we hear them used in everyday conversation. Yet we doubt them more than ever. But numbers – in the right hands – have the power to change the world for the better.

Tim argues that, contrary to popular belief, good statistics are not a trick, although they are a kind of magic.

Good statistics are like a telescope for an astronomer, a microscope for a bacteriologist or an X-ray for a radiologist. If we are willing to let them, good statistics help us see things about the world that we would not be able to see in any other way.

Book written by Tim Harford.

Omnibus of five parts abridged and produced by Jane Greenwood.

A Loftus Media production for Â鶹Éç Radio 4 first broadcast in December 2020.

*** Tim Harford is a columnist at the Financial Times and the presenter of Â鶹Éç Radio 4’s ‘More or Less’ and ‘Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy.

He's also the author of the best-selling ‘The Undercover Economist’.