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Asymptomatic Covid19 Cases Oct 31, 2020

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A headline in a British tabloid newspaper claimed that ‘Staggering 86% who tested Covid positive in lockdown had NONE of the official symptoms’ but what does this mean and is it true?

US election: facts or fiction Oct 24, 2020

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Tim Harford hears about the sheer volume of false claims made during the campaign. President Trump is well known for making wild statements, but has his behaviour changed? And what about Joe Biden? So much attention is concentrated on Trump’s claims, how does the Democratic candidate fare? Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post and Katherine J Wu at the New York Times tell us about fact-checking during the run up to the election.

US election: facts or fiction Oct 24, 2020

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Auction Theory - Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson Oct 17, 2020

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Paul Milgrom and his former tutor Robert Wilson worked together for years developing ways to run complicated auctions for large resources. This month the two Stanford University professors were awarded the Nobel memorial prize in economics for their work. The auction formats they designed facilitated the sale of goods and services that are difficult to sell in a conventional way, such as radio frequencies.

A short history of probability Oct 10, 2020

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Tim Harford speaks to Jacob Goldstein about the unholy marriage of mathematicians, gamblers, and actuaries at the dawn of modern finance.

Spreadsheet snafu, ‘Long Covid’ quantified, and the birth of probability Oct 07, 2020

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After nearly 16,000 cases disappeared off coronaviruses spreadsheets, we ask what went wrong. How common are lasting symptoms from Covid-19? If you survey people about the death toll from Covid, they’ll make mistakes. What do those mistakes teach us? Pedants versus poets on the subject of exponential growth. And we dive deep into the unholy marriage of mathematicians, gamblers, and actuaries at the dawn of modern finance.

'Record' Covid cases, Trump on the death count, and ant pheromones Sep 30, 2020

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Daily recorded coronavirus cases in the UK have hit record levels; we explain why that’s not as bad news as it sounds. We hear a mathematical answer to the problem of Covid-19 testing capacity. How can we assess a country’s capacity to take refugees? US president Donald Trump has said that just six per cent of people who were reported to have died from Covid in the US actually died from the disease. Could he be right? (No.) Plus: what ant pheremones can teach you about your life decisions.

Covid curve queried, false positives, and the Queen’s head Sep 23, 2020

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A scary government graph this week showed what would happen if coronavirus cases doubled every seven days. But is that what’s happening? There’s much confusion about how many Covid test results are false positives - we explain all. Plus, do coffee and pregnancy mix? And the Queen, Mao, and Gandhi go head to head: who is on the most stamps and coins?

The magical maths of pool testing Sep 19, 2020

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Tim Harford speaks to Israeli researcher, Tomer Hertz, about how the mathematical magic of pool testing could help countries to ramp up their Covid-19 testing capacity.

Covid testing capacity, refugee numbers, and mascara Sep 16, 2020

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Amid reports of problems with coronavirus testing across the UK, we interrogate the numbers on laboratory capacity. Does the government’s Operation Moonshot plan for mass testing make statistical sense? Has the UK been taking more refugees from outside the European Union than any EU country? We explore the connection between socio-economic status and Covid deaths. And we do the maths on a mascara brand’s bold claim about emboldening your eyelashes.

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