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More or Less

Numbers of the Year 2015

More or Less

BBC

News Commentary, Science, Mathematics, News

4.63.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tim Harford looks back at some of the most interesting numbers behind the news in 2015, from the migrant crisis to social media messages. Contributors include: Professor Jane Green, Helen Arney, Paul Lewis, Andrew Samson, Leonard Doyle , Peter Cunliffe-Jones, Farai Chideya, Claire Melamed and Professor John Allen Paulos.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC.

0:03.0

In this special edition of more or less,

0:05.0

Tim Harford looks at some of the numbers of the year for 2015.

0:09.0

Hello and welcome to more or less,

0:12.0

your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life.

0:16.6

As we start the new year we thought we'd have a look back at some of the biggest and smallest numbers

0:21.6

in the worlds of news, money, culture and sport over the past 12 months.

0:26.5

The European migrant crisis has never been far from the headlines.

0:30.9

Boatloads of people are still fleeing conflict, violence or poverty to try to start new lives in Europe.

0:38.0

There's a father there in the middle just holding on to his child.

0:41.6

Who would put all those people onto that boat, pack them in?

0:46.9

The wind was strong on Lesbos today and the rough seas brought with them bodies.

0:52.1

Thousands and thousands of people have been here and thousands more behind them.

1:00.0

They're queuing patiently to get permissions across the border into Croatia.

1:07.0

Our first guest is Leonard Doyle from the International Organization for Migration.

1:12.0

I think the most significant number this year is the 1,056,000 asylum applications that have been

1:18.6

logged in European Union countries between January and October of 2015.

1:24.0

So this is well up on the 662,000 applications

1:29.0

over the entire of 2014.

1:32.0

And of course we all know this because every time we've turned on the radio

1:34.6

or switched on the tele we've seen stories of migrants and refugees

1:38.6

coincable times and this is the underlying number and And it's up, as you say, about 50% and the full data from 2015 not yet in.

...

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