Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy.

My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC.

It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs,

moments and movements, stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous.

And the BBC's position, at the heart of British music

means we can tell those stories like no one else.

We were, are and always will be right there at the centre of the narrative.

So whether you want an insightful take on music right now

or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and infamous moments in music,

check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds.

Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast. We are your weekly guide to the

numbers in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Harford. If I asked you what Shakespeare gave us,

you might talk about his flair for language,

descriptions that trip off the tongue, the nuance in his narratives, his insight into the human condition.

But what does the most influential writer in the English language have to do with more or less?

Well, much. According to today's guest, Rob Easterway, Maths communicator and author

of Much Adoo About Numbers. Welcome back to more or less, Rob. I think a lot of people will not

associate Shakespeare with mathematics. They feel like they're different sides of the GCSE curriculum,

so to speak. So what is the association between numbers and Shakespeare?

I don't think I would have expected to find any association between maths and Shakespeare

until I started searching for maths words, because I was asked to do a session for a group

of maths teachers at a conference in Stratford upon Avon, which is Shakespeare's

...