It’s been reported that air pollution kills 40,000 people in the UK every year. That’s a big number, but is it trustworthy? David Spiegelhalter, President of the Royal Statistical Society, teases apart the numbers.
If you’re keen on numeracy, numbers, and fact-based analysis, you’ll have heard of the death of the great statistician and all-round amazing person, Hans Rosling. Gapminder is a website that highlights some of the work and the work of his team, and is well worth a visit.
This video recreates the classic “Powers of Ten” film, zooming out to larger and larger scales to the limits of our understanding of the universe, and then zooming in again, down to the smallest things we know about.
It’s an excellent way of illustrating relative magnitudes of distance. One gripe: it all happens a bit too quickly: try watching it at half speed.
Thanks to Andrew Steele (@statto on Twitter) for this website, which puts into context how much (little!) the UK spends on science each year. Take a look for yourself and ask “are these big numbers?”
£10.4 bn per annum: Is That A Big Number?
https://scienceogram.org/summary/
/./itabn/answer?magnitude=10.4&multiple=G&unit=GBP&measure=a