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Trust : The question of trust arises from two recent government decisions. One is Gordon Brown's announcement that National Statistics, the agency responsible for much official data, will be made i...ndependent. The second is the Home Secretary's creation of an all-party group to look into crime statistics. In both cases, is there a recognition that public trust in statistics has fallen, that politicians may have played a part, and that the remedy is to put more distance between them and the figures? Some argue that we need the same reform of official numbers as we saw when the Monetary Policy Committee was given control of Britain's interest rates. We investigate the issues and put the various proposals for reform to a senior Labour politician. Hedgehogs : The hedgehogs, or at least explanations for their declining squished numbers on the roads, are flourishing since our invitation last week for explanations, (unlikely explanations we readily admit) of why fewer on the roads might mean more in the wild. Stock market : And the combination of trampolines, pretty faces and the stock market will all become clear when we ask why valuations of companies can rise and fall dramatically over a short period - in the case of the FTSE 100 share index nearly halving and then doubling in the last five years.
Trust : The question of trust arises from two recent government decisions. One is Gordon Brown's announcement that National Statistics, the agency responsible for much official data, will be made i...ndependent. The second is the Home Secretary's creation of an all-party group to look into crime statistics. In both cases, is there a recognition that public trust in statistics has fallen, that politicians may have played a part, and that the remedy is to put more distance between them and the figures? Some argue that we need the same reform of official numbers as we saw when the Monetary Policy Committee was given control of Britain's interest rates. We investigate the issues and put the various proposals for reform to a senior Labour politician. Hedgehogs : The hedgehogs, or at least explanations for their declining squished numbers on the roads, are flourishing since our invitation last week for explanations, (unlikely explanations we readily admit) of why fewer on the roads might mean more in the wild. Stock market : And the combination of trampolines, pretty faces and the stock market will all become clear when we ask why valuations of companies can rise and fall dramatically over a short period - in the case of the FTSE 100 share index nearly halving and then doubling in the last five years.
| Series: | More or less |
|---|---|
| Episode | 7 |
| First transmission date: | 2006-02-02 |
| Published: | 2006 |
| Rights Statement: | Rights owned or controlled by The Open University |
| Restrictions on use: | This material can be used in accordance with The Open University conditions of use. A link to the conditions can be found at the bottom of all OU Digital Archive web pages. |
| Duration: | 00:26:55 |
| + Show more... | |
| Producer: | Michael Blastland |
| Contributor: | A. W Dilnot |
| Publisher: | BBC Open University |
| Subject terms: | Mathematical statistics; Social sciences--Statistical methods |
| Production number: | AUDA034B |
| Available to public: | no |
