Google recently released a visual breakdown of the most popular "how to" searches worldwide since 2004. Curiously, the top ten features such eclectic topics as kissing, weight loss and pancakes! Here are the top ten, ranked in order.

My wife and I have about the same number of Twitter followers — 16k and 14k respectively — but her tweets consistently outperform mine. In fact, according to the SparkScore tool from the Twitter marketing service SparkToro, an average tweet from her gets three times as many retweets and 10 times as many faves.

Housing affordability, high house prices and rents are attracting plenty of media attention right now. The latest figures on house prices, mortgages, number of first time buyers and so on are dissected by journalists and commentators as if this is an issue of recent origin. In fact what we have here is a long-term structural problem that has been neglected for decades.

Sloppy statistics and research misconduct are nothing new, but it's rare to get a clear picture of exactly how questionable data gets turned into clicky headlines. We have that now with the latest reporting on Cornell food scientist Brian Wansink, and it's worth taking a minute to look at what's exactly so wrong about the dodgy research techniques he's been accused of employing.

Misusing statistics is one of the most powerful ways to lie. Normally, we teach you how to avoid misinterpreting statistics, but knowing how numbers are manipulated can help you spot when it happens. To that end, we're going to show you how to make data say whatever the hell you want to back up any wrong idea you have.

Just how likely does "probably" sound to you? To some people, "probably" means that something is practically locked in. To others, it means the likelihood of something happening is highly dubious. This graph assigns percentage values to a range of common phrases relating to probability. Turns out you should say "almost certainly" instead of "probably" if you want to minimise doubt.

Scarcely a day passes when I don't receive a report from some analyst or research organisation informing me of how a new product has saved a bunch of companies a massive sum of money, or how a product has been identified as a leader or innovator in their chosen market niche. But can we trust these reports?

When you hear stats and facts with extremely large numbers, it can be hard to wrap your head around what that number really represents. If you want to get a grasp on large numbers, you need to start changing perspectives and converting them into more understandable numbers.

Making New Year's resolutions is tricky in the first place. Do you start out small with something you know you can achieve consistently without really pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, or do you go all out and hope that willpower alone will drag you through? In other words, do you make a resolution to catch the train to work a little more instead of driving, or do you make a resolution to take a holiday every month and pack on 20 kilos of muscle at the gym before the next year is out?

How You Will Die: it's a simulator.

Plug in your race, age and sex. Then find out -- according to the data -- the statistical reasons for your potential death throughout your life.

Google Trends is a neat little tool that can show how often people search for things. It's handy for seeing when people first became aware of popular topics. However, sensational news stories about search trends use it improperly more often than not.

Even with Apple's relatively successful entry in the market, smartwatches are still perceived as a niche segment. But if you're a developer, the evidence is mounting that there might eventually be a business case for building apps to run on smartwatches alongside your existing mobile apps.

We've been hearing about the connected car for some time -- but how far is expectation from reality? Is there a model that will help us understand when this will really happen? Cisco say it's closer than we think.

Buying your first home is always challenging, and rising prices don't make it any easier. Here are the median prices for a house or a unit in Australia's capital cities right now, according to the CoreLogic RP Data Hedonic Home Value Index.

Salaries vary widely, but there's one truth that's still sadly universal: women get paid less for the same work. How does that play out for IT workers in Australia's biggest companies?

Data centre equipment in Australia is a $2.5 billion a year business, but it ain't the business it once was. Growing demand for cloud rather than building your own data centre means that we're seeing a decline in building activity, especially for larger centres.

Blackouts in Australia are on the rise. A compilation of outage reports by industrial manufacturer Eaton found that in 2014 there were 201 power outages across Australia and New Zealand, up from 162 the previous year.

We love using tablets, but it seems we don't want to upgrade them very often. According to analyst firm Telsyste, sales of tablets in Australia dropped 20 per cent in the second half of 2014 compared to the year before.

Subscription streaming services like Netflix and Stan generally refuse to disclose how many hours of content they offer, but those numbers can be a useful raw metric for deciding who provides the best value. Streaming search app Gyde has toted up the numbers on the five main services in Australia right now. Who comes out on top?