Month: May 2013

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - The Maths of Mozart and Birds

Birds + windows =? The BBC Quiz show The Unbelievable Truth reckons that more than 2 million birds die crashing into window panes every day in the US. Tim Harford finds this, well, unbelievable. Marcus du Sautoy explores the maths in Mozart's The Magic Flute; a student who uncovered a mistake in a famous economic paper, which has been used to make the case for austerity cuts, explains how he did it.

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Start the Week - Michael Rosen at the Brighton Festival

Start the Week is at the Brighton Festival. Stephanie Flanders talks to Michael Rosen about why the 1929 children's novel, Emil and the Detectives, is at the heart of the festival, with its city tale of hope, invention and dissent. But the writer and traveller Jay Griffiths criticises a Western risk-averse society for denying children the opportunity to roam free. Stanmer Woods is the setting of Matt Adams's latest theatrical experience which traces the legacy of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and the artist Mariele Neudecker brings the outside world inside in her transformation of a Regency Town House.

Producer; Katy Hickman.

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Birds, Mozart, austerity, Thatcher

Birds + windows =? The BBC Quiz show The Unbelievable Truth reckons that more than 2 million birds die crashing into window panes every day in the US. Tim Harford finds this, well, unbelievable. Marcus du Sautoy explores the maths in Mozart's The Magic Flute; a student who uncovered a mistake in a famous economic paper, which has been used to make the case for austerity cuts, explains how he did it; and separating fact from fiction about Margaret Thatcher with a look at the numbers of her time in office.