"We've seen not just President Hollande but many different leaders within Europe acknowledge the importance of pursuing growth, at the same time as they're pursuing the austerity targets, so we think that sets the basis for a good discussion, " he said.

BBC: Monsieur Hollande: Obama's new friend

In recent years, the basis upon which the Fed sets interest rates has been far from clear to the Fed itself, as well as to financial markets.

ECONOMIST: The euro

The lack of data sets received on a regular basis, the lack of an industry standard format for data set composition, and the composition of data sets that were unformatted or too large for computers to process without crashing.

FORBES: J.P. Morgan Did Not Learn Any Lessons From 2008

Since JP did not send them detailed data sets on a daily basis, it created significant gaps in the number of trades that were recorded.

FORBES: J.P. Morgan Did Not Learn Any Lessons From 2008

These two sets of complaints, or demands, provide the basis for a bargain.

ECONOMIST: Helping Khatami

The new sets of overall weights are then used as a basis for a further recalculation, and the whole process is repeated until the values become stable.

ECONOMIST: Hits and misses

New laws mean that new free schools and academies, if they are faith-based, have to limit their "faith intake" to 50% of the total if they are oversubscribed, whereas voluntary-aided schools can select pupils on the basis of their faith as long as they follow the Admissions Code, which sets out rules for England's schools.

BBC: Richmond Catholic school fight goes to the High Court

Of course, as with most sets of statistics, it will be possible to argue almost anything on the basis of this year's results.

BBC: A game of two halves