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Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander.

Think of cells in the human body as factories.

Think of the molecules inside the cells as machines.

Sometimes that machinery goes haywire.

Scientists need to know how that happens and why,

if they're to have any chance against one of the world's biggest killers, cancer.

Some of the best minds in medical research are focused on understanding

and ultimately eliminating the disease.

And they know more now than they ever did.

New technologies mean a lot of information.

Data can be extracted from cells that are not behaving normally.

But huge volumes of data is just that.

To find the answers to the how and why questions

it needs to be sorted, analysed, interpreted.

And for this, the cancer doctors, chemists and biologists

turn the statisticians.

And one statistician in particular, Professor Terry Speed.

There's just so many forms of data.

...