More or Less: Behind the Stats

President Elect Donald Trump has created a new government advisory group – the Department of Government Efficiency or ‘DOGE’ - to help cut the US budget.

The world richest man, Elon Musk, will co-head the department and has pledged to cut ‘at least $2 trillion’ to ‘balance the budget’. But is this possible? We talk to Professor Linda Bilmes about what DOGE could or couldn’t do and how she balanced the budget in the 1990’s.

Presenter: Charlotte McDonald

Governments around the world have promised to fight climate change. But are they also pumping an absolutely massive amount of money into subsidies for fossil fuels?

Just hours after Donald Trump claimed victory in the US presidential election, rumours started swirling that something was afoot.

A huge quantity of clothing is produced every year around the world. But is so much made that there are already enough tops, trousers, skirts and all the rest to clothe humanity for decades into the future?

That’s a claim that has been percolating around the internet recently, that there are already enough clothes for the next six generations.

Tim Harford and Beth Ashmead Latham explore the source of this claim and, with help from Sabina Lawreniuk from Nottingham University, find that the evidence behind it is far from persuasive.

Presenter: Tim Harford and Bethan Ashmead Latham

The great theories of economics seem to have great explanatory power, but the actual world is often far too complicated and messy to fully test them out.

Professor Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, an economist at the London School of Economics has an answer – sport. In the contained setting of competitive sport, he says, the rules are clear and you know who is doing what. This means, with some analysis, you can see vibrant illustrations of well-known economic theories playing out before your eyes.

Ignacio talks to Tim Harford about some of his favourite economic theories, demonstrated in action in sporting competition.

Presenter: Tim Harford

Could the cut in winter fuel payments cost thousands of lives?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news.

Presenter: Tim Harford

On the campaign trail for the US presidency, former president Donald Trump has been saying that the US is becoming a more dangerous than Venezuela.

He also claims that the crime data for the US that the FBI collects is missing the most violent cities.

Is he right? Tim Harford investigates, with the help of Bastian Herre from Our World in Data and Jay Albanese from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Presenter: Tim Harford

Was an MP wrong about the number of people who pay capital gains tax?

Why is 2% the magic number for the rate of inflation?

Donald Trump says US crime figures are fake. Are they?

How do you work out how many buffaloberries a bear eats in a day?

And we fact-check a claim about the prevalence of suicide among GPs. For information and support follow this link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/actionline

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news.

Presenter: Tim Harford

The question of why some countries are rich and some poor has been described as the most important question in economics.

Perhaps that is why the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson for their work on the importance of institutions in the economic fortunes of nation states.

Tim Harford explains the economic theory that underpins their award.

Presenter: Charlotte McDonald

Can we teach BBC political editor Chris Mason some new maths skills?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news.

Presenter: Tim Harford