Data is de rigueur these days. We all know we need it, every line of work uses it, each of us is part of it, many of us interact with it, but fewer know how to get it or what to do with it once we have it. Enter the BBC Radio 4 podcast Uncharted, here to show you how numbers, graphs, maths and data plotting can be pivotal, the secret sauce behind some of the biggest scandals, historical watersheds and plot twists of the modern age.
Uncharted, which launched its second season last month, is hosted by the poised and entertaining Hannah Fry, introducing herself as a mathematician who studies human behaviour. And much about this podcast is about where maths and human behaviours intersect, the short step from graphs, statistics, probability and mathematical algorithms to solving murder mysteries, finding cures for diseases and connecting people with their soul mates.
Each episode is a story seen through a mathematical lens, and they really run the gamut. The first episode of series one, for example, looks at how a graph helped reveal what was behind a particular anomaly in the ratio of baby boys to baby girls born in England and Wales in 1973.
Just a couple of episodes later and we’re hearing about the serial killer Dr Harold Shipman, as told through the impact of graphs, in particular one that plotted the times of his patients’ deaths – a statistically impossible number of which appeared to take place at the same time of day – and uncovered the extent of his crimes. “The deadly ritual hidden within those lines provided a way for investigators to home in on the death certificates that needed a careful second look,” says Fry. The doctor would have regular mornings in his surgery, then murder victims in their homes during his afternoon house calls.
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We’ve got stories about Bernie Madoff and climate change and Volkswagen and online dating, with maths as the hero in every one. It’s a novel lens through which to examine these disparate moments and testimony to the power of data to shape a story. The thing is, they’re cracking stories, and Uncharted does a great job of altering our perspective on them and highlighting new elements but a less satisfying job of pacing them. Presumably somewhere in the data on podcasts there’s a pointer to the fact that listeners gravitate towards shorter episodes, which may be why Uncharted ensures each episode comes in around the 15-minute mark. But for the first time in my podcast-reviewing history, I find myself wishing they were longer.
Maths can be a lens, it can be a hero and shape the outcomes, but the story has its own shape, and if you’re going down a rabbit hole with Bernie Madoff or Harold Shipman, you’ve got to commit. Fry, a professor of maths at University College London, is a wonder at connecting the dots, but the rhythm, the ineffable breath of a tale well told, is harder to map on intersecting axes.
In the end Uncharted does a canny job of upending our views of many people’s least favourite subject in school and placing an unsung hero at the centre of the drama, but I miss that sense of satisfaction that comes at the end of a tale well timed. Uncharted finds the end of the yarn and follows it, but it wraps the whole too tightly and abruptly for this listener. To extend this metaphor all the way off the chart, I could use a little slack.
