More or Less

When you’re listening to the news, you will often hear words that are meant to communicate the probability of something happening. A terrorist attack is “a realistic possibility”, the spread of a certain strain of virus is “highly likely", the relegation of your favourite football team is “possible”.But when you hear these terms, do you really know what kind of probabilities they’re trying to convey? Do you know how likely “likely” is? Or what probability “probable” is meant to get across?In some cases, it seems you probably don't.Professor Adam Kucharski, author of Proof, the Uncertain Science of Certainty, designed a quiz to work out the actual probabilities of the language we use to convey risks.The data he got back shows how sometimes these words mean very different things to different people.If you want to try the quiz for yourself, head over to https://probability.kucharski.io/Email the More or Less team: [email protected] CREDITS:Presenter: Charlotte McDonald Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Gareth Jones Editor: Richard Vadon

As Artificial Intelligence continues to expand rapidly, some people have raised concerns about its potential environmental impact - in particular its use of water, which is used to cool both data centres and the power generators that supply them with electricity.One recent book on AI contained the alarming prediction that AI could consume between 4 and 6 trillion litres a year by 2027. Could this eye-popping figure be right? If not, what is the correct figure, and is it a big number?The devil, as ever, is in the detail, and with the help of expert Alex de Vries-Gao, the More or Loss team has taken a deep dive to get to the truth about AI and water consumption.If you’ve seen a number in the news and you think More or Less should take a look, email the team on [email protected]: Charlotte McDonald Producer / Reporter: Nathan Gower Series Producer: Tom Colls Programme Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: Dave O’Neil Editor: Richard Vadon

Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling book The Population Bomb opens with an apocalyptic paragraph. “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” it states. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”Professor Ehrlich, who died last week, made a simple argument. The global population was outrunning our capacity to produce enough food to feed everyone. Famine, disease and nuclear Armageddon would follow if the population was not controlled.The book made him a celebrity, and he regularly spoke in public, warning of the imminent threat to humanity. Sometimes his warnings were quite vague in terms of the timescale, but other times not - he was reported as saying in 1968 that if current trends continued, by the year 2000, the UK would be a “small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people". "If I were a gambler," he was quoted as saying, "I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000".But the UK did not collapse, the global death rate did not increase, and we have more food per person now than when he wrote the book. So, what went wrong with Paul Ehrlich's predictions of a population apocalypse?If you’ve seen a number or claim that you think More or Less should look at, email [email protected] CONTRIBUTORSVincent Geloso, Assistant Professor of economics at George Mason UniversityDarrell Bricker, global CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs and co-author of Empty Planet, the Shock of Global Population DeclinePeter Alexander, Professor of Global Food Systems at the University of EdinburghCREDITS:Presenter: Charlotte McDonald Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Dave O’Neil Editor: Richard Vadon