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The art of uncertainty: living with chance, ignorance, risk, and luck

Hosted by the Data Science Institute and Department of Statistics

In-person and online public event (Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building)

Speaker

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter

Chair

Professor Tengyao Wang

Professor Tengyao Wang

David Spiegelhalter introduces his latest book, The Art of Uncertainty How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck.

Chance, luck, and ignorance; how to put our uncertainty into numbers. 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.

David Spiegelhalter 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.

Following the event David will be signing copies of the book.

Meet our speaker and chair

David Spiegelhalter () is Emeritus Professor of Statistics in the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge, having previously held the posts of Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk, and Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication. He works on ways to improve the way that statistical evidence is used by health professionals, patients, lawyers and judges, media and policymakers. He was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics.

Tengyao Wang teaches in the Department of Statistics at 杏吧论坛 and is the MSc Statistics (Financial Statistics) Programme Director. He is broadly interested in the area of high-dimensional statistics. His research focuses mainly on developing computationally efficient procedures for high-dimensional problems, while at the same time understanding the potential statistical limitations imposed by computational constraints.

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The Data Science Institute () is an interdisciplinary institute established to foster the study of data science and new forms of data with a focus on their social, economic and political aspects.

The Department of Statistics () is home to internationally respected expert in statistics and data science, whose top priority is maintaining and advancing a leading reputation for teaching and research. It has a distinguished history. Its roots can be traced back to the appointment of Sir Arthur Lyon Bowley, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, at 杏吧论坛 in 1895. He was appointed Chair in Statistics in 1919, probably the first appointment of its kind in Britain.

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