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More or Less

More or Less: Opinion polling, Kevin Pietersen, and stacking Lego

More or Less

BBC

News Commentary, Science, Mathematics, News

4.63.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2012

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On More or Less this week Tim Harford looks at three polls carried out to gauge the public’s opinion on press regulation gave vastly different answers despite being carried out by the same polling company. Tim talks to Peter Kellner, President of online polling company YouGov. Would you send Kevin Pietersen out to bat if your life depended on him scoring a century? Have two thirds of millionaires really left the country as claimed by the Daily Telegraph this week? What percentage of drinks might be affected by the introduction of a minimum price for alcohol. And how high could you build a Lego tower before the bottom brick collapses? Ruth Alexander dons her safety goggles to find out?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

0:04.7

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

0:08.5

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

0:18.0

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

0:24.6

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

0:29.7

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

0:36.0

Thank you for downloading this edition of More or Less from BBC Radio 4.

0:40.0

Here's Tim Harford.

0:42.0

Hello and welcome to more or less the sandbag holding back the flood of bad statistics in the news and in life.

0:50.0

This week we'll be asking whether if your life depended on someone scoring a century in cricket,

0:56.0

you'd send Kevin Peterson out to bat.

0:58.0

We'll look at the claim that two-thirds of millionaires left the UK to avoid the 50-P tax rate.

1:04.4

And Ruth Alexander answers the important question of how high you can build a LEGO tower

1:09.6

before the bottom brick collapses.

1:12.1

Because we're beginning to get a little bit nervous about the number of bits that might fly

1:15.2

into and it's failing, we're setting it up to do it automatically so that we could all back out

1:18.7

of the room so that none of us is in range when the thing goes bang.

1:22.1

But first, this week Lord

1:24.4

Leveson published his report into the culture, practice and ethics of the

1:28.5

press and made recommendations about how it should be regulated in the future.

1:32.1

From the benches of the House of Commons to homes across Britain,

1:35.0

people have been talking about what the future of the press should be.

...

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