Why do some big successful brands go bust?

Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.

I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.

They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.

And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners and employees to ask, what can we learn?

It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't survive.

Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

Hello and welcome to more or less.

I'm Tim Harford and we're your weekly guide to the numbers all around us in life and in the news.

Although this week we'll be looking at some 19th century numbers and the woman who wielded them to change the world. Florence Nightingale was a true

celebrity in Victorian Britain and became one of the closest things the UK had to a patron saint. Her

image was on the English banknote in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. At the time, the only non-royal woman

ever to have adorned the currency.

This fame recognised her work as a nurse in the Crimean War of the mid-1850s,

in which the Russian Empire fought and lost a bitter battle with the other great European powers, including Britain.

Wounded British soldiers were transported from the front to hospitals in Istanbul,

where despite the efforts of Nightingale's team of nurses, they perished in great numbers.

This catastrophe notwithstanding, Florence Nightingale was immortalised as the Lady with the Lamp, walking the wards

and tending to the needs of the wounded. But in nerd circles, which are the circles I move in,

and I hope the same is true for you, dear listener, Florence Nightingale is more famous as a pioneer

of statistics and statistical graphics.

I hope that I now have your attention.

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