Author: BBC Radio 4

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - WS More or Less: The life expectancy of a Pope

Life expectancy of a Pope

In 2014 Pope Francis alluded to the fact he didn?t expect to live more than another two or three years. A group of statisticians have taken a look at the life expectancy of popes over the centuries and decided that he may have been rather pessimistic.

The curse of the London Olympics

In a similar vein, is there an unusually high death count among athletes who took part in the London Olympics in 2012? The French press seem to think there is. Currently news reports estimate that 18 people have so far died since taking part in the sports event. The athletes come from teams around the world and have died from all sorts of causes ? from cancer to drowning, murder, suicide, a helicopter crash among other things. But is there really a link between taking part in the London Olympics and the chances of dying? Or is it to be expected, statistically speaking, that 18 people have died over the last four years?

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Start the Week - Reporting War and Conflict

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe discusses the writing of war and conflict. The journalist Patrick Cockburn looks back at his years covering crises in the Middle East, especially the rise of the so-called Islamic state. The Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran looks at the difficulty of reporting in a country where press freedoms are severely curtailed and asks whether fiction and poetry are a way of telling a more truthful story. The legendary American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh first gained recognition in the 1960s for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War and has spent his career uncovering wrong-doing at the highest level. But reporting is changing and the academic Charlie Beckett celebrates the rise of citizen journalism. Producer: Katy Hickman.

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Celebrity deaths

Celebrity deaths

A number of people have asked the team if more famous people have died this year compared to other years. It?s a hard one to measure ? but we have had a go at some back of the envelope calculations with data from Who?s Who and BBC obituaries. Is the intuitive feeling that more people have died this year misplaced?

?What British Muslims really think? poll

This week many news outlets covered polling research carried out for a documentary on Channel 4. Some of the points that came out included that half of all British Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal and that 23% want Sharia Law. But how representative are these views? We speak to Anthony Wells from the blog UK Polling Report who explains the difficulties of carrying out polling.

The number of Brits abroad

Figures released this week suggested that there was an increase in the number of people coming to the UK from other parts of Europe. But many listeners have been asking ? how many Brits are living in other parts of Europe? We try to find the best figures available.

European Girls Maths Olympiad

In 2012 a new international maths competition was started at the University of Cambridge. It was a chance for female students to get a chance of meeting girls from other countries and try to solve hard maths problems, as they are under represented at most other international competitions. We hear about how the competition got started in celebration of this year's competition in Romania.

Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Charlotte McDonald

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Start the Week - Loneliness and Inner Voices

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the psychologist Charles Fernyhough about the inner speech in our heads. But what if it's a lone voice? The writer Olivia Laing explores what it's like to be lonely in a bustling city, while the playwright Alistair McDowall explores what happens when you're abandoned on a distant planet with no sense of time. The biographer Frances Wilson writes a tale of hero-worship, betrayal and revenge through the life of Thomas De Quincey, a man who modelled his opium-habit on Coleridge and his voice and writing on Wordsworth. Producer: Katy Hickman.

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Start the Week - Loneliness and Inner Voices

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the psychologist Charles Fernyhough about the inner speech in our heads. But what if it's a lone voice? The writer Olivia Laing explores what it's like to be lonely in a bustling city, while the playwright Alistair McDowall explores what happens when you're abandoned on a distant planet with no sense of time. The biographer Frances Wilson writes a tale of hero-worship, betrayal and revenge through the life of Thomas De Quincey, a man who modelled his opium-habit on Coleridge and his voice and writing on Wordsworth. Producer: Katy Hickman.

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - WS More or Less: The story of average

In the 1600s astronomers were coming up with measurements to help sailors read their maps with a compass. But with all the observations of the skies they were making, how do they choose the best number? We tell the story of how astronomers started to find the average from a group of numbers. By the 1800s, one Belgian astronomer began to apply this to all sorts of social and national statistics ? and the ?Average Man? was born.

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Fathers and babies

Paternity Leave This week it was claimed that only 1 percent of men are taking up the option of shared parental leave ? a new provision that came into force a year ago. A number of media outlets covered the story, interviewing experts about why there was such a low take-up. But in reality the figures used are deeply flawed and cannot be used to prove such a statement.

Exponential Love ?I love you twice as much today as yesterday, but half as much as tomorrow.? ? This is the inscription on a card that teacher Kyle Evans once saw in a card from his father to his mother. But if that was true, what would it have meant over the course of their relationship? Kyle takes us through a musical exploration of what exponential love would look like. The item is based on a performance he gave for a regional heat of Cheltenham Festivals Famelab ? a competition trying to explain science in an engaging way.

The cost of the EU One of our listeners spotted a comparison made this week between the UK?s contribution to the EU and a sandwich. One blogger says it?s like buying a ?3 sandwich with a ?5 note, and getting over a ?1,000 in change. We look at the figures on how much the UK pays to the EU, and what it gets back.

The story of ?average? In the 1600s astronomers were coming up with measurements to help sailors read their maps with a compass. But with all the observations of the skies they were making, how did they choose the best number? We tell the story of how astronomers started to find the average from a group of numbers. By the 1800s, one Belgian astronomer began to apply it to all sorts of social and national statistics ? and the ?Average Man? was born.

And we set a little maths problem to solve...

Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Charlotte McDonald

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - WS More or Less: The Great EU Cabbage Myth

Could there really be 26,911 words of European Union regulation dedicated to the sale of cabbage? This figure is often used by those arguing there is too much bureaucracy in the EU. But we trace its origins back to 1940s America. It wasn?t true then, and it isn?t true today. So how did this cabbage myth grow and spread? And what is the real number of words relating to the sale of cabbages in the EU? Tim Harford presents.

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Start the Week - Greece and the Eurozone with Yanis Varoufakis

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the state of the Eurozone and the politics of austerity with the economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, the Director of the Institute of Global Affairs Erik Berglof and the Mayor of London's Chief Economic Advisor, Gerard Lyons. Yanis Varoufakis tracks the problems of the Eurozone to its woeful design and its continued reliance on debt and austerity, rather than reform. The classicist Paul Cartledge explores the history of democracy back to its birthplace in Athens and traces the long slow degradation of the original Greek concept. Since the crisis in 2008 Greece has been in economic and political turmoil but there has also been a cultural renaissance. The academic Karen Van Dyck has brought together the best of contemporary Greek poetry by multi-ethnic poets in a new anthology.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Presenter: Andrew Marr.

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Start the Week - Greece and the Eurozone with Yanis Varoufakis

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the state of the Eurozone and the politics of austerity with the economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, the Director of the Institute of Global Affairs Erik Berglof and the Mayor of London's Chief Economic Advisor, Gerard Lyons. Yanis Varoufakis tracks the problems of the Eurozone to its woeful design and its continued reliance on debt and austerity, rather than reform. The classicist Paul Cartledge explores the history of democracy back to its birthplace in Athens and traces the long slow degradation of the original Greek concept. Since the crisis in 2008 Greece has been in economic and political turmoil but there has also been a cultural renaissance. The academic Karen Van Dyck has brought together the best of contemporary Greek poetry by multi-ethnic poets in a new anthology.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Presenter: Andrew Marr.