The Joy of Statistics

BBC Four is becoming an excellent channel for documentaries. After Michael Cockerell's terrific three part series "Secrets of Whitehall", comes this highly educational presentation from Professor Hans Rosling. It made me feel as if I had missed my vocation and that a career in statistics would have been right up my street. But I guess a job in the civil service is where I would have ended up and that is not a nice thought.

However, the Swedish professor's programme was the next best thing. He was so passionate and articulate about his subject. His example of deaths on British roads having been unbelievably consistent year on year, with the same proportion of men and women, the former two and a half times as likely to die. His explanation of correlation was very interesting and he made it really simple to understand. We need more programmes like this to keep my brain learning new stuff.