Join/merge 3 tables with count

Question

I have 3 tables:

people:

pid    name
1      Cal
2      Example
3      Another
4      Person

talkingPoints:

tid    pid    talkingPoint
1      1      "..."
2      1      "..."
3      2      "..."

facts:

fid    pid    fact
1      3      "..."
2      2      "..."

And I'm trying to combine a count of talkingPoints and facts to 'people', for example:

pid    name     talkingPoints  facts
1      Cal      2              null
2      Example  1              1
3      Another  null           1
4      Person   null           null

(ordered by talkingPoints desc, then alphabetical, including 'people' rows which do not have any values for the counts)

I managed to combine 'people' with only one other table:

SELECT a.pid,a.name,
count(b.tid)  
FROM people a, talkingPoints b  
WHERE a.pid=b.pid  
GROUP BY b.pid;

but that query ignores rows with a zero count (e.g. the row 'Person')

I hacked up this query which works correctly for 'talkingPoints' but I have not been able to adapt it to also combine 'facts' like my example table above.

select people.pid, people.name, x.talkingPoints from people left join 
(select pid, name, count(name) talkingPoints from 
(select people.pid, people.name from people
join talkingPoints on talkingPoints.pid = people.pid)
 as talkingPoints group by talkingPoints.pid)
 as x on x.pid = people.pid order by talkingPoints desc, people.name asc;

(probably a terrible way but it worked in the meantime)

How can I adapt my queries so they will output a table like my example?

Answer 1

SELECT  a.pid,
        a.name,
        COUNT(DISTINCT b.tid) talkingpoints,
        COUNT(DISTINCT c.fid) facts
FROM    people a
        LEFT JOIN talkingPoints b
            ON a.pid = b.pid
        LEFT JOIN facts c
            ON a.pid = c.pid
GROUP   BY a.pid, a.name
ORDER   BY a.pid

• SQLFiddle Demo

Answer 2

Using independent correlated subqueries in the SELECT clause avoids the duplicates caused by the joins:

SELECT pid,
       name,
       (SELECT COUNT(*)
        FROM talkingPoints
        WHERE pid = people.pid) AS talkingPoints,
       (SELECT COUNT(*)
        FROM facts
        WHERE pid = people.pid) AS facts
FROM people

SQLFiddle