To breastfeed or not to breastfeed?  With last week’s Unicef UK report ‘Preventing Disease and Saving Resources’, the case in favour of mothers breast feeding babies until they are at least 6 months old seems to be stacking up and there’s a lot of international, national and local data on the subject. International data? UNICEF data shows that UK breastfeeding rates are increasing but remain among the lowest in Europe. 81% of

Immigration as defined by the public isn’t necessarily the same as defined by the official statistics, according to an Ipsos Mori survey on behalf of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University. Thinking Behind the Numbers says ’members of the public and the government may be thinking about different things even when both are talking about “immigration”. Categories such as temporary immigrants and students loom large in official statistics, but less than a

Few numbers interest parents more than those describing their child’s growth. As the father of a two-year old boy, I am often filled with pride when someone comments on how tall my son is. Is this pride rational? A preference for tallness runs though many (if not most) cultures, and seems to be reflected in a wide variety of outcomes,  including mate-selection and political elections. It is likely that this preference exists because growth is influenced by a variety

According to a poll conducted by the World Cancer Research Fund and reported by BBC News, just one in five Britons eats the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. If we are to take this seriously, it would be useful to know whether we are missing the target by a little or a lot: if the average number of portions consumed is 4.5 then that is a