Episode details

Radio 4,07 Oct 2020,28 mins
Spreadsheet snafu, ‘Long Covid’ quantified, and the birth of probability
More or LessAvailable for over a year
After nearly 16,000 cases disappeared off coronaviruses spreadsheets, we ask what went wrong. How common are lasting symptoms from Covid-19? If you survey people about the death toll from Covid, they’ll make mistakes. What do those mistakes teach us? Pedants versus poets on the subject of exponential growth. And we dive deep into the unholy marriage of mathematicians, gamblers, and actuaries at the dawn of modern finance.
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