Air traffic controllers are meant to stop aircraft flying into one another... and if they fail, computer systems are installed to warn pilots of a coming collision. But sometimes these humans and computers give conflicting and confusing advice. Who to believe? When a...

“He’s a genius at telling stories that illuminate our world”
Malcolm Gladwell
The Sunday Times number One Business Bestseller
How to Make the World Add Up
Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers
Is Published in North America as
The Data Detective
Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics
Best Selling Author
Tim Harford
Tim is an economist, journalist and broadcaster. He is author of “The Next Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy”, “Messy”, and the million-selling “The Undercover Economist”. Tim is a senior columnist at the Financial Times, and the presenter of Radio 4’s “More or Less”, the iTunes-topping series “Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy”, and the new podcast “Cautionary Tales”. Tim has spoken at TED, PopTech and the Sydney Opera House. He is an associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. Tim was made an OBE for services to improving economic understanding in the New Year honours of 2019.
Books
The Truth Detective
“Tim Harford is peerless at making sense of a complicated world and our place within it. This is a book that all children should read”
Matthew Syed
How to Make the World Add Up
“Tim Harford is our most likeable champion of reason and rigour… clear, clever and always highly readable.”
The Times, Books of the Year
The Next Fifty Things
“Endlessly insightful and full of surprises – exactly what you would expect from Tim Harford.”
Bill Bryson
Fifty Things
“Packed with fascinating detail… Harford has an engagingly wry style and his book is a superb introduction to some of the most vital products of human ingenuity.”
The Sunday Times
The Undercover Economist Strikes Back
“Every Tim Harford book is cause for celebration. He makes the ‘dismal science’ seem like an awful lot of fun.”
Malcolm Gladwell
Adapt
“In a world that craves certainty, Harford makes a compelling case for why we can’t have it. A brilliant and oddly empowering book.”
Dave Gorman
Dear Undercover Economist
“The very best letters from the ‘Dear Economist’ columns from 2003-2008 in one handy book-sized package.”
The Logic of Life
“As lively as it is smart, charming, penetrating, and wise. If you are at all interested in knowing much more than you do about how the world works, you couldn’t ask for a better guide than Harford.”
Stephen J. Dubner
Articles
The enshittification of apps is real. But is it bad?
Elon Musk has given us someone to blame for the fact Twitter seems so terrible nowadays, but it’s far from being the only internet platform that seems terrible. Facebook is a mess. Young people tell me that Instagram has ruined itself in the quest to be like TikTok...
Why children can be better than adults at spotting misinformation
I’ve spent years trying to help people make sense of the world around them and particularly to make sense of the numbers that describe that world. But for the past few months, I’ve been wrestling with a new challenge: can I do the same thing for nine- to 13-year-olds?...
Cautionary Tales – Office Hell: The demise of the playful workspace
In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal. They would sweep away corner offices and cubicles and replace them with zany open spaces, as well as innovative portable...
Can gamers outplay rapacious capitalists?
Forty years ago, a kid from down the street told me about this cool new game, Tunnels & Trolls. Something about his explanation kept eluding my grasp. Was it a computer game, like Pac-Man or Chuckie Egg? A board game, like Risk or Monopoly? No. There was no...
Foolproof by Sander van der Linden
Rukmani and her family were driving to a temple in Tamil Nadu, India, in May 2018, when they stopped to ask for directions from an elderly local lady. It seemed a safe enough thing to do. The family hadn’t realised that almost every local with access to WhatsApp had...
Cautionary Tales – LaLa Land: Galileo’s Warning (Classic)
Galileo tried to teach us that when we add more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster, those layers of complexity may eventually be what causes the catastrophe. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the...
Why Chatbots are bound to spout bullshit
Much has changed since 1986, when the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt published an essay in an obscure journal, Raritan, titled “On Bullshit”. Yet the essay, later republished as a slim bestseller, remains unnervingly relevant. Frankfurt’s brilliant insight was...
Talks about the Truth Detective
I'm giving some talks about my imminent book, The Truth Detective. Come along! Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford - 2pm on 1st April at the Oxford Literary Festival Oxford Maths Festival - 3pm on 14th May. Hay Festival - 26th May, 1pm. The Royal Institution - 23 September,...