Numbers of the year
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2013
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A guide to 2013 in numbers - the most informative, interesting and idiosyncratic statistics of the year discussed by More or Less interviewees. Contributors: David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University; Linda Yueh, BBC chief business correspondent; Simon Singh, author of The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets; Dr Pippa Malmgren, president and founder of Principalis Asset Management; Paul Lewis; presenter of BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme; Dr Hannah Fry, Centre of the Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London; Merryn Somerset-Webb, editor-in-chief of MoneyWeek; Helen Arney, comedian. Producer: Ben Carter.
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, |
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| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | Thank you for downloading more or less from the BBC. |
| 0:39.7 | This is the version of the programme first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Halford. |
| 0:44.6 | Hello and welcome to more or less. It's become a seasonal tradition of ours to take a |
| 0:50.2 | look back at the most intriguing, striking or just plain delightful numbers of the year. |
| 0:56.0 | And since we've not heard from Nottie Ash yet, what better way to start than to listen to |
| 1:00.5 | a bit of Ken Dodd? Oh, and a bit of David Spiegelhaltor. |
| 1:04.5 | Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I possess. My number of the year is 7.3. This is the average response given by about 165,000 people |
| 1:20.4 | when the Office for National Statistics asked them on a scale from 0 to 10, |
| 1:25.6 | how happy were you yesterday? It's about the same as last year. About 15% were completely |
| 1:31.8 | manic and said 10, 1% were really miserable and said 0, but only 10% said 4 or less. |
| 1:39.1 | The question, are you satisfied with your life, got an average of 7.5, higher if people were married, lower if |
| 1:45.1 | they're unemployed, slightly higher for females. The most measurable age is |
| 1:49.0 | 45 to 54. I remember it very well and the highest is 65 to 79. I can't wait. |
| 1:56.0 | Those smug Danes when they were asked how happy they were yesterday said 8.4 even in spite of the gloomy |
| 2:02.0 | crime dramas they watch, while Bulgarians said 5.5 were the worst in Europe. |
... |
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