Statistics. The final frontier. These are the episodes of more or less.

Our 20-year mission to seek out new data and correct new errors,

to boldly build spreadsheets that no show has built before.

The final frontier. It's nearly two decades since more or less first

beamed arithmetic into the unsuspecting ears of radio-forelessness,

and in this, the last in the present series, we'll revisit the show's genesis,

with the original presenter and producer. We'll also round up answers to a variety of your

questions and try to respond to a meteor storm of complaints about our earlier item,

a certain that Star Trek's Mr. Spock is in fact highly illogical.

And we'll ask what statistical secret the Green Door is keeping.

But first, a couple of weeks ago we did one of our Covid roundups. This is what I sounded like back then.

Recently, measured cases have definitely been coming down.

Ah, heady days. Of course, cases promptly started going up.

So, I was going to come and explain this new upward trend, but Covid was one step ahead,

cases, deaths and hospitalisations all ticked back down.

Will any of that last long enough to still be true for those listening to the Sunday repeat

of this programme? I wouldn't bet on it. Back in the day, Covid was all too predictable.

Mountainous peaks of exponential growth, followed by mass, hospitalisation and death,

tough lockdowns and long steady descents as the virus receded. Epidemiologists would talk about

doubling times and halving times. But now, Covid's not like that at all. From week to week,

it's very hard to predict. And for the last two or three months, cases have gently risen and fallen

around a fairly flat trend. Hospitalisations and deaths slowly rose, and they're now slowly falling.

...