More or Less

On the right hand side of the page I've added an RSS feed for the More or Less Podcast; this should automatically update with the latest versions of the program. 

Each week Tim Hartford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life. 

This week what is the world average salary?

The Budget 2012

Statisticians and economists have had a field day in interpreting this year's Budget. It is difficult to find an unbiased report on George Osborne's offerings this year, but Channel 4 News Factcheck does a credible job in trying to answer the question, who really are the winners and losers?

Will the wealthiest pay more or less?

The blog nicely sums up how difficult it is to model people's behaviour with respect to tax avoidance: "all academics stress that these numbers are vague and forecasts can easily be wrong."

Misleading statistics about eating red meat

Statistics gone wrong? In response to recent research from Harvard School of Public Health about the health risks of eating red meat, Channel 4 News' Cathy Newman interviewed a St. George's Hospital dietician - who says that the statistics are misleading. Watch the interview here.

What data can reveal about someones life

Stephen Wolfram (the founder of Wolfram Alpha) has published some interesting data that gives a revealing portrait of his own life.

Amongst other things he has recorded the time of every one of the 300,000 e-mails that he has sent in the last 20 years:

Not only can you get a clear view of his work day but also the increase in the use of e-mail in that time. This is revealed in more detail here with clear peaks as the big projects he has worked on have come to fruition:

Not only has he looked at e-mail but he has also recorded other information about himself such as the number of paces he takes each day, and even the number of key strokes on his keyboard. Putting this together:

Source - http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/

Graduate employment

New data shows that:

More graduates are employed in lower skill jobs.

1 in 5 graduates are unemployed.

Medicine and dentistry graduates remain the best paid, closely followed by maths and engineering graduates.

Source - http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/06/graduate-employment-low-skill-jobs

Study statistics

According to Hal Varian from google:

"the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I'm joking, but who would've guessed that computer engineers would've been the sexy job of the 1990s?"

A new report estimates that the US alone will need an extra 1.5 million managers capable of making decisions based on data.

Read more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/02/data-scientist