More or Less: Behind the Stats

Tim Harford and the team take a look at some of the numbers in the news about flooding. What is a one hundred year flood? And is there really a north-south divide in the amount of money spent on flood defences in England? What is the total number of possible tweets that could be created from 140 characters? In a recent programme Professor John Allen-Paulos told us that when you take into account all of the symbols available, the total number of possible tweets is Googol2.8 (which is a 1 followed by 280 zeros.) But has he missed some options? One of our listener’s questions whether Christmas Eve is really the busiest day on the roads. We take a look at the figures. Plus – which is the bigger number? The total number of Storm Trooper toys ever made, or the number of real life soldiers serving in armies around the world?