Royal Statistical Society

Stephanie Hare, author of 'Technology is Not Neutral', talks to Real World Data Science about the 'wicked problem' of technology and AI ethics, and why laws and regulations are 'necessary but insufficient' to minimise harms. 'We're going to have to inculcate an entire new mindset', she argues.

Biostatistician by design: from prisons to prions by Royal Statistical Society

Dr Anna Heath is a biostatistician at SickKids Hospital in Toronto within the Child Health Evaluative Sciences (CHES) program, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and an honorary research fellow at University College London in the Department of Statistical Science. We spoke with Anna about the application of health economic ideas to the conception, design and analysis of clinical trials, and in particular the concept of the Value of Information whereby we can quantify the economic value of obtaining information through research.

Dr Richard Saldanha is an expert in statistical machine learning and quantitative finance. He co-heads Oxquant, a management consulting business involved in AI/ML advisory work in finance and other knowledge-based industries. Richard has worked in quantitative finance for over 23 years and has held senior roles in both asset management and investment banking at major institutions in the City of London in the areas of risk management, trading and investments. Richard holds a doctorate (DPhil) in Statistics from the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow and Chartered Statistician (CStat) of the Royal Statistical Society, a Member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

The Stats + Stories podcast comes to RSS Conference 2020. Join host John Bailer for 80 minutes of debate and discussion on “the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics”. Featuring guests Tim Harford, author and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s More or Less, who will explain his “rules for thinking differently about numbers”; and Timandra Harkness, presenter, writer and comedian, who will talk about the misunderstanding of risk and the challenge of Covid-19. https://statsandstories.net/

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove is an epidemiologist at the World Health Organisation (WHO) and technical lead for the Covid-19 pandemic. We spoke with Maria about how the WHO is able to best use vast amounts of data and research findings to inform guidance and some of the challenges and opportunities for the future.

Professor Christl Donnelly, of Oxford University and Imperial College London, gave the 29th Bradford Hill Memorial Lecture on 30th June 2020 in London. We caught up with Christl to talk about her vast practical experience of applying methods in the context of infectious diseases, including SARS, MERS, Ebola and Covid-19. We discussed the real-time analysis of infectious diseases and some of the questions related to this we might ask. For instance, how many cases are there, who's getting sick and how fast is the epidemic growing? Christl explained how statistics, epidemiology and modelling can help to address these questions.

RSS Chief Executive Stian Westlake chaired a short panel discussion on what is commonly termed the ‘A level exams fiasco’. When physical exams taking place in 2020 were cancelled in the UK because of the Covid-19 pandemic, an algorithm was developed to set students’ exam grades. However, this algorithm had to be abandoned after significant inconsistencies were identified in the results.

Mags Wiley speaks to Colin Gillespie from Newcastle University about his modelling of sheep flocking.

Mags Wiley speaks to Rachel Hogg about the work she does as a statistician at NHS Blood and Transplant, as part of the team looking into the reasons why mortality rates for patients on the lung transplant list are so high and how better patient care can be delivered.

Jen Rogers interviews Amy-Jayne McKnight to discuss the challenges associated with genomic data. We consider how data is captured, processed, and then analysed and AJ outlines the challenges presented by sources of variability.

Brian Tarran, editor of Significance (www.significancemagazine.com), talks to Darren Dahly (University College Cork) and Maarten van Smeden (Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum) about Twitter and the role the social media platform can play in supporting and developing a statistical career – from finding research collaborators to critiquing papers and everything in between.

Brian Tarran, editor of Significance (www.significancemagazine.com), interviews John MacInnes (http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/sociology/macinnes_john), chair of the Royal Statistical Society Professional Affairs Committee and professor of sociology at the University of Edinburgh. They discuss the changing forms that statistics is taking in the era of data abundance and the ethical challenges this gives rise to.

Mags Wiley interviews Guy Miscampbell, technical lead at the Social Metrics Commission, on the innovations and methodology behind the Commission’s new measure of poverty for the UK. To read more about the Social Metrics Commission’s work go to: https://socialmetricscommission.org.uk/ https://twitter.com/socmetricscomm

Brian Tarran, editor of Significance (www.significancemagazine.com), interviews James Tucker, head of the Quality Centre and Methodology Advisory Service at the Office for National Statistics, about respondent confidentiality, and data privacy and protection. They discuss new threats to privacy such as linkage attacks, and how the creation and release of synthetic data sets can help protect respondents while still supporting evidence-based decision making.

Mags Wiley interviews Kevin Johanson, from the Expert Group on Sámi Statistics based in Norway, on how the group is working on developing statistics on the Sámi people and how these statistics can lead to better policymaking.

Mags Wiley interviews David Smallbone, from the RSS Business & Industrial Section on what exactly is predictive maintenance and the challenges and opportunities it brings. To find out more about the RSS Business and Industrial Section go to: https://www.rss.org.uk/RSS/Get_involved/Sections/Business_and_Industrial_Section.aspx?WebsiteKey=bc86df55-c2ae-4d73-8450-66ecc8988ded&hkey=c49e7196-fb1a-4c1d-8259-7c2f6c51e474

Brian Tarran, editor of Significance (www.significancemagazine.com), interviews Thordis L. Thorarinsdottir (https://www.nr.no/~thordis/), chief research scientist of the Norwegian Computing Center, about predicting future sea level rise, dealing with uncertainty in predictions, and advising policy makers on how to prepare for a changing world. For more on this topic, read: “How to save Bergen from the sea? Decisions under uncertainty”, by Peter Guttorp and Thordis L. Thorarinsdottir (https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2018.01125.x).

How have neighbourhoods changed over the past few decades? Sara McDonnell spoke to Professor Chris Lloyd of Queen’s University Belfast about his research that has brought new perspectives on how local communities in Britain have changed, using data from the last five censuses. See PopChange population grids for Britain, 1971-2011 at http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/852498/

Can statistics make your salad taste better? Sara McDonnell spoke to Iain Flint of G’s Growers about the IceCAM project, which helps to minimise food waste by adapting the growing programmes of iceberg lettuces according to weather predictions. Find out more about G’s at gs-fresh.com or email info@gs-fresh.com. https://www.gs-growers.com/

Brian Tarran, editor of Significance (www.significancemagazine.com), interviews Lancaster University’s Harry Spearing (https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/~spearing/) about the application of extreme value theory to the ranking of Olympic swimmers, as well as ranking in sports more generally.

Mags Wiley interviews Debbie Keatley, from use MY data about the group’s aims and the benefits of sharing health data to improve patient outcomes. To find out more about use MY data go to: http://www.usemydata.org/

Sara McDonnell talked to Professor David Firth of the University of Warwick about ‘spaed rankings’ and how they have been performing when predicting Premier League football end-of-season standings.

Mags Wiley interviews Kevin Johanson, from the Expert Group on Sámi Statistics based in Norway, on how the group is working on developing statistics on the Sámi people and how these statistics can lead to better policymaking.

Professor Deborah Ashby gave her RSS President's Address on 25th June 2019 in London. We caught up with Deborah to talk about her statistical background, her career in medical statistics and why growing capacity to use data for society is a particular passion of hers.

Martin Bland, Emeritus Professor of Health Statistics from the University of York, shares stories from his statistical journey and friendship with the celebrated medical statistician Doug Altman, who sadly passed away in 2018. Doug Altman is considered by many to have contributed more than any other statistician to improving the evidence for clinical practice. A world-leading expert on health research methodology and reporting, Doug was director for the Centre for Statistics in Medicine and professor of statistics in medicine at the University of Oxford, posts he held for more than 20 years: https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/3817-douglas-altman-1948-2018

Emerging Threats by Royal Statistical Society