Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Whether it’s from our friends, workmates or via various media platforms, both social and traditional, these days we’re all faced with a never-ending bombardment of information expressed through numbers, percentages and statistics. But how exactly should we go about interpreting them?
In this episode, we catch up with Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, a statistician and science communicator based at the University of Cambridge.
He shares some simple advice to help us understand how the risks and benefits of various lifestyle factors, such as exercise and diet, are presented to us, explains how framing can be used to make any number look big or small, and tells us what everyone, including scientists, could be doing better when we speak about numbers.
For more podcast content from the BBC Science Focus team, find Instant Genius on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow us on X: @SFIGPod
Whether it’s from our friends, workmates or via various media platforms, both social and traditional, these days we’re all faced with a never-ending bombardment of information expressed through numbers, percentages and statistics. But how exactly should we go about interpreting them?
In this episode, we catch up with Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, a statistician and science communicator based at the University of Cambridge.
He shares some simple advice to help us understand how the risks and benefits of various lifestyle factors, such as exercise and diet, are presented to us, explains how framing can be used to make any number look big or small, and tells us what everyone, including scientists, could be doing better when we speak about numbers.
For more podcast content from the BBC Science Focus team, find Instant Genius on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow us on X: @SFIGPod
