Chance, luck, and ignorance; how to put our uncertainty into numbers
George Square Lecture Theatres or Microsoft Teams26th Sep5.30pm-6.30pmFree
The 2024 public lecture of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society: "Chance, luck, and ignorance; how to put our uncertainty into numbers" by Professor David Spiegelhalter of University of Cambridge.
The lecture will be accessible to enthusiastic secondary school pupils, parents and carers, educators, and any other adults.
We all have to live with uncertainty about what is going to happen, what has happened, and why things turned out how they did. We attribute good and bad events as due to chance, label people as lucky, and (sometimes) admit our ignorance. In this public lecture, David Speigelhalter will show how to use the theory of probability to take apart all these ideas, and demonstrate how you can put numbers on your ignorance, and then measure how good those numbers are. Along the way we will look at three types of luck, and judge whether Derren Brown was lucky or unlucky when he was filmed flipping ten Heads in a row.
Professor Spiegelhalters latest book is The Art of Uncertainty, How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck (Penguin, September 19th 2024). The book will be on sale at the event.
About the speaker:
Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS OBE is Emeritus Professor of Statistics in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He works to improve the way in which risk and statistical evidence are taught and discussed in society: he gives many presentations to schools and others, advises organisations on risk communication, and is a regular commentator on risk issues. He presented the BBC4 documentaries Tails you Win: the Science of Chance and the award-winning Climate Change by Numbers.
Professor Spiegelhalter was elected FRS in 2005, awarded an OBE in 2006, and was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics. His bestselling book, The Art of Statistics, has been published in 11 languages. His current roles are as Non-Executive Director, UK Statistics Authority; Mathematical Futures expert board of the Royal Society; Member of the Statistics Expert Group for the Infected Blood Inquiry, 2019 2024; and Advisor; NHS Maternity and Neonatal Outcomes Group.
Location: Lecture theatre B, 40 George Square Lecture Theatres, Edinburgh EH8 9LX (please see the location on the map) and Microsoft Teams
To join the meeting via Teams, please register via the link below. There is no need to register for in person attendance.
To celebrate Book Week Scotland, we are delighted to announce the finalists and winners of our Maths Tales story-writing competition, run in partnership with Read Write Count with The First Minister.
