Main content

Fit for Work or at Death's Door?

Tim Harford asks whether thousands of people are dying after being declared 'fit for work' by the government, if sugar is bad for health, and if it is better to queue backwards.

Deaths of people 'fit for work'
Thousands of people are dying after being declared 'fit for work' by the government according to the Guardian. The figures are from a long awaited freedom of information release from the Department for Work and Pensions. But do the figures actually tell us anything? More or Less investigates.

Sugar
Sugar has had a pretty bad press over the last few months and seems to have replaced fat as the current 'evil' in our diets. We look at some of the claims that have been made about rotting teeth and the justifications for a sugar tax.

Zero-hours contracts
The latest figures show a 20% rise - but does this really mean that more people are on zero hours contracts thab=n last year?

Queuing Backwards
Britons love to queue, but have we been getting it wrong? Lars Peter Osterdal from the University of Southern Denmark discusses his theory of how to make queuing more efficient.

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Sun 6 Sep 2015 20:00

Chapters

  • Sugar

    We look at some claims about rotting teeth and the justifications for a sugar tax.

    Duration: 08:28

Broadcasts

  • Fri 4 Sep 2015 16:30
  • Sun 6 Sep 2015 20:00

Just how reliable is our intuition? Find out with The Open University

OU Connect: Put your brain to the test with our new mind-bending probability problems!

When can you trust statistics?

When can you trust statistics?

主播大秀 Ideas discovers three easy ways to help make sense of statistics.

Download this programme

Download this programme

Subscribe to the More or Less Podcast or download individual episodes.