Thank you for downloading the more or less podcast.

We are a guide to the numbers all around us in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Halford.

We begin the programme with some questions about a major tragedy that's been making the headlines recently.

Pakistan says a third of the country is underwater after catastrophic floods.

Pakistan's climate minister has said that an estimated one-third of the country is now underwater,

with the flooding impacting 33 million people on the ground.

Where heavy rains and floods have submerged a third of the country.

The scale of the devastation in Pakistan is clearly huge,

but a few listeners have been in touch to ask about a particular claim that's been repeated

over and over again. Hi more or less team, I'm sure I'm not the only person to write you

at this question. We've been following the Pakistan floods with great sadness.

They are an awful loss of life bringing unimaginable devastation to the Pakistan nation.

Officials say that one third of the country is now underwater.

This feels like a huge statistic. Could it really be the case? Thank you.

We also had a weather forecast to get in touch,

sending us a satellite image that seemed to show that about 5% of Pakistan was submerged.

If true, that would still be flooding on a staggering scale,

but nowhere near one third of the country.

So where do these estimates come from? Can we rely on them?

And what do they really tell us about the extent of the tragedy?

I called up Dr Simon Cook, a senior lecturer in environmental science at the University of Dundee

in the UK. People have been trying to understand the sheer scope of the catastrophe in Pakistan by

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