TV and radio

Tim Harford (pictured), presenter of the inimitable More or Less, outlines the thinking behind the OU/BBC Radio Four series which has tackled such questions as: does the private sector pay better than the public sector? are energy-saving lightbulbs really as bright as they claim? are your trousers flattering you? And he explains how he incurred the wrath of cyclists and cat-lovers.

Does More or Less have a mission?

It’s really about empowering people to treat numbers and statistics as their friends, rather than as something that can used to intimidate them, exclude them or browbeat them. And we try hard to make it fun.

How do you select your themes?

We’re lucky to have a very active group of listeners, and we take a lot of our ideas from them. 

We try to respond to at least one news item every week. One of the things we have is more time to get at the truth: the evening news might have two or three hours, we have a couple of days.  That gives us an unfair advantage, we try and use it. 

How do you try to get at the truth?

It’s often about taking numbers that have been stripped of any context and saying: the number is correct, but you have to understand the context before you can understand what it means. 

To know how a number was collected can tell you a lot about it. One of my favourites examples is: how many security cameras are there in the UK? The answer is: we don’t know. Most security cameras are installed on private property, and why would anybody count them? But there’s a number that goes around, and is very commonly sited, and we looked at where it came from. It came from researchers who had walked down two streets in London, and counted every camera on those two streets, and scaled up. This happened in 2002, and that number is still going around. 

Should we all be more wary when we hear statistics quoted?

There’s a basic health check you can do. Ask yourself: how big a number is that? There are 60 million people in the country, so if somebody says they’re spending £6 million on some programme, that’s 10p per person. If they say ‘£6 billion’ that’s £100 per person. Quite a difference.

When you’re told something has risen or fallen, ask yourself: compared to what? since when? So if, as I heard recently, the government is said to be spending more on the armed forces since 1997, think: is that maybe due to the fact we’re fighting a couple of wars, and in the previous 10 years, we weren’t? 

Are there some topics which provoke strong reactions?

We’ve tried not shy away from contentious topics. We talk about politically charged subjects, we talk about crime, we have an item I’m quite proud of on human trafficking and forced prostitution.

Sometimes subjects are controversial to our great surprise. We had an item about how many birds are killed by cats, and an item on should cyclists wear helmets,  and both of these we just thought of as being of some interest. But they turned out to have huge lobby groups attached, which is always interesting.

Do you personally have any connection with The Open University?

I have been seriously considering taking a statistics course at the OU. My professional academic qualifications are in economics, which gives me a strong grasp of a particular kind of statistics, but not of statistics in general. So I’ve ordered all the brochures and I’ve been sitting and leafing them through just like a kid in a sweetshop. But I don’t want to make any rash promises, because I know an OU course is a serious commitment, and I’m extremely busy.

Funnily enough my father, stepmother and brother-in-law all have Open University qualifications at various levels, and my late mother was very committed to adult education. So I think the mission of the OU to provide quality education to people at any stage of their life, and of any background, is incredibly important.  

Broadcaster and author Tim Harford writes the Undercover Economist column and Dear Economist problem page in the Financial Times. He has been presented of More or Less since 2007.Tim is on Twitter @timharford.

In the UK, we have clean water available on tap and yet we spend our hard-earned cash buying two billion litres of bottled water every year. The food industry has become very clever at repackaging basic commodities and selling them to us at high prices.

Dr Fiona Ellis-Chadwick, Senior Lecturer in Retail Management at the Open University, an academic adviser to the 2010 OU/BBC series The Foods That Make Billions, takes about the power of branding.

“It is essential to have water, but it’s not essential to have it packaged in a nice bottle. Brands of bottled water have developed strongly in the past 30 years, for example, Perrier, Evian, Volvic. It is fascinating to see how, as brands grow in importance, a story emerges that gives the brand heritage and meaning. So, when you drink Perrier, the brand means more than just a drink of water.
 

Buy-in from young consumers

"Yoghurt has been packaged, sweetened, flavoured and shaped to suit the tastes of the British consumer. The Ski brand got us into the idea that yoghurt was a healthy foodstuff but this was only the start. Leading brands have developed by marketing to us the benefits of friendly bacteria, antioxidants, and bio yoghurts enriched with juice and fruits, as incentives to improve our daily diets. No longer is yoghurt for 20-something women wishing to diet, it is a convenience foodstuff we are all prepared to eat.

"Brands are developed for specific target markets; sugared cereals are specially designed for children, who have a sweeter tooth, then they are carefully marketed, often using cartoon characters to get buy-in from young consumers."

The Foods That Make Billions, a Open University/BBC series from the Money Programme stable, examined how a British food industry worth £80 billion a year has become a key target market for food multinationals. Each of the three episodes focused on a different commodity (water, cereals and yoghurt) and tells the story of how each has given rise to some of the richest and most successful industries in the world, spawning brands that are now household names. As well as the business and marketing stories behind these phenomena, the series also looks at the cultural influence of well-known brands and how, over the last 60 years, we have emerged from a time of scarcity and entered an age of convenience, choice and plenty.

Useful links

• Just say no to bottled water?
• OU on the BBC: The Foods That Make Billions
• What´s the perfect brand of water?
  
• Study with the OU - An introduction to retail management and marketing
• Study with the OU - Foundation degree in retail management (the course devotes a large section of the course to marketing) 
• Study with the OU - Marketing and society

Ever wondered how authors are connected? Then try this interactive tool and connect the dots between Britain´s 20th century novelists.

The tool was developed by the OU´s OpenLearn Explore team for the OU/BBC co-production In Their Own Words: British Novelists which aired on BBC Four in August 2010, and is now available to watch on BBC iPlayer. The series tells the story of the British novel in the 20th century by those who know it best, the authors themselves. Explore the Openlearn page to find other resources connected to the series.

The tool was created in conjunction with academics from The Open University’s Faculty of Arts to help promote literature and creative writing courses.