How to Make the World Add Up – Tim Harford

At The Margin | 16 September 2020 | 0h 43m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Tim Harford about his book How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers. Warns against being misled by statistics but also warns of the need to get statistics right and take them seriously. Offers some rules of thumb for making sense of the information we see around us.

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A Tsunami of Misery

Cautionary Tales | 19 June 2020 | 0h 24m | Listen Later | iTunes
Tim Harford uses the example of the Fukushima nuclear disaster to highlight the pitfalls of ignoring longer-term ills when taking action against urgent dangers.

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Chess Algorithms

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy | 17 February 2020 | 0h 09m | Listen Later | iTunes
Tim Harford delves into the history of algorithms, their use by mathematicians and scientists for millennia, and the new power and importance they’ve acquired in the digital age.

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La La Land: Galileo’s Warning

Cautionary Tales | 22 November 2019 | 0h 33m | Listen Later | iTunes
Galileo tried to teach us that adding more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster often makes catastrophe all the more likely to happen. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the Oscars… all resulting in chaos.

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Prohibition

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy | 30 September 2019 | 0h 10m | Listen Later | iTunes
When the US outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, it inadvertently created one of the most successful black markets in the world. Tim Harford considers how much it costs to make something illegal, and what a failed law reveals about the way criminals make their money.

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CubeSat

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy | 8 July 2019 | 0h 9m | Listen Later | iTunes
CubeSat started life as a student engineering challenge: build a satellite that can fit in a little toy box. But now these tiny satellites are changing the way we use space – and economics.

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