The Aperiodical 

You're reading: Posts Tagged: David Spiegelhalter

Particularly mathematical New Years Honours 2022

By Peter Rowlett. Posted January 1, 2022

It’s that time of year when we take a look at the UK Government’s New Years Honours list for any particularly mathematical entries. Here is the selection for this year – any more, let us know in the comments and we’ll add to the list. 

• David Winton Harding, founder of the Winton Group, knighted for services to philanthropy – which includes funding the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, home of Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter.
• Owen Abbott, Head, Census and Population Statistics Methodology, Office for National Statistics. Appointed OBE for services to Census and Population Statistics.
• Veronica Bowman, Statistics and Data Science Fellow, dstl. Appointed OBE for services to defence and the Covid-19 response.
• Henrietta Brown, Business Operations Lead, Office for National Statistics. Appointed OBE for services to the Census of England and Wales.
• Nira Chamberlain, President, Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. Appointed OBE for services to mathematical sciences.
• Alexander Lambert, Deputy Director, Covid Infection Survey Operations, Office for National Statistics. Appointed OBE for services to statistics and public health.
• William Marks, Senior Policy Liaison, Analysis and Civil Contingencies Secretariat Dashboard, Cabinet Office and Office of National Statistics. Appointed OBE for public service.
• Lynne McClure, Director, Cambridge Mathematics. Appointed OBE for services to education.
• Kevin Sweeney, Lately Head, Central Survey Unit, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Appointed OBE for public service, particularly during Covid-19.
• Arron Maspero, Programme Delivery Manager, Census Field Devices, Office for National Statistics. Appointed MBE for services to Census 2021 Field Operations.

Get the full list here.

Podcasting about: Risky Talk Podcast

By Katie Steckles. Posted March 11, 2020

In this series of posts, we’ll be featuring mathematical podcasts from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the podcast and asking them about what they do.

We spoke to Ilan Goodman from the Winton Centre for Risk & Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, about the centre’s new podcast Risky Talk, in which Sir David Spiegelhalter talks to risk experts about probability and stats.

News of some significance

By Peter Rowlett. Posted July 31, 2017

You may have heard of the replicability crisis in science, and practices like outcome switching and p-hacking. BuzzFeed reports on a paper that proposes a solution: rather than assign statistical significance at $p=0.05$, change this value to $0.005$.

Sir David Spiegelhalter is quoted saying: “Dealing with the size of the p-value fixes some things. But it’s not dealing with the most important issues.” There’s a lot more in the BuzzFeed article and the full paper.

More information

PsyArXiv preprint: Redefine statistical significance.

BuzzFeed: These People Are Trying To Fix A Huge Problem In Science.

Particularly mathematical Birthday Honours 2014

By Peter Rowlett and Katie Steckles. Posted June 15, 2014

With the announcement the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, it’s time for the latest in our ongoing Honours-watch series of posts. In this, we search arbitrarily for ‘mathematics’ in the PDFs of the various lists, and hope our well-informed readers fill in the blanks where actual knowledge is required.

Maths at the Cheltenham Science Festival

By Katie Steckles. Posted June 2, 2013

Next week, scientists, science fans and science communicators will converge on Cheltenham town hall for a week of high-quality science festival. But how much of the programme is given over to the queen of all sciences, Mathematics? Here’s a list of some of the events going on we’d be interested in going to.

Follow Friday, 9/11/12

By Katie Steckles. Posted November 9, 2012

At what can only be described as far too regular an interval for such things, it’s another Follow Friday! Here’s who you should be getting in line behind people to follow this week, as well as some of their recent interesting links.

L’Aquila seismologists found guilty of manslaughter connected to earthquake risk assessment

By Peter Rowlett. Posted October 22, 2012

In David Spiegelhalter’s excellent programme on risk, Tails You Win: The Science of Chance, we heard about the classic case of Michael Fish failing to predict the 1987 hurricane, and about the difficulty of predicting such events. Another area where precise prediction is extremely difficult is earthquakes.

Today the BBC are reporting that “six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison” in L’Aquila, Italy, having been found “guilty of multiple manslaughter” because of a “falsely reassuring statement” they gave before a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the city in 2009 and killed 309 people.