Podcast: How to understand statistics in the news and when to trust them

Tom Chivers and David Chivers, authors of How to Read Numbers, explain how to make sense of the stats you see in the news about health and risk.

Published: April 12, 2021 at 8:00 am

In this week's episode of theScience Focus Podcast, editor Daniel Bennett speaks to Tom Chivers and David Chivers.

Tom is a veteran science journalist and author and David is lecturer in economics at the University of Durham. As well as a surname, they share a passion for statistics, or more precisely for the way that numbers are used and presented in the media. Together they’ve written a new book: How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News and Knowing When to Trust Them.

They talk to Daniel about how to understand the sometimes confusing stats surrounding health and risk, how to spot a suspicious claim when you see one, and how to think about the current concerns surrounding the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

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