Stats+Stories: Live at RSS 2020

In this episode Wilson Fandino, a consultant anaesthetist, discusses his recent experience publishing in the RSS's Significance magazine, where his article investigated the use of the chi-squared test and Fisher's exact test in medical research.

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.