TANC evening seminar: How to gamble if you must (courtesy of the Reverend Bayes)
Speaker: Professor David Spiegelhalter, Cambridge University
Date and Time: Thursday 13 June 2013, 18.00 - 21.00
Location: Room 2003, Cass Business School, 106 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8TZ
Bayesian theory is widely used every day across the world. Did you know that its concepts are applied in catching doping athletes, predicting volcanic eruptions, gambling and weather forecasting?
The Actuarial Network at Cass (TANC) invites you to the enlightening and engaging evening seminar “How to Gamble if you Must (courtesy of the Reverend Bayes)” by Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University. David is an accomplished statistician, speaker and TV & radio presenter and his talk promises to be both entertaining and thought-provoking.
When the Reverend Thomas Bayes died in 1761, he left behind two revolutionary ideas:
- expressing our uncertainty about current or future states of the world as a probability distribution, and
- how to revise our probabilities in the light of experience.
Bayes’s mathematical legacy not only helps take some of the guesswork out of betting and forecasting, but also provides a coherent way of reasoning with ‘epistemic’ uncertainty – when we admit we don’t know what is going on.
The speaker, Professor David Spiegelhalter, will also be checking whether the audience knows how ignorant they are!
Join us for this exciting and commemorative talk to mark the Reverend’s legacy by celebrating all he brought to our understanding of statistics.
Agenda
18.00 - 18.30: Registration
18.30 - 19.30: Presentation by Professor David Spiegelhalter
19.30 - 20.00: Q&A
20.00 - 21.00: Networking over nibbles and drinks
About the speaker
David Spiegelhalter is Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge and Senior Scientist in the MRC Biostatistics Unit. His background is in medical statistics, particularly the use of Bayesian methods in clinical trials, health technology assessment and drug safety. He led the statistical team in the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry and also gave evidence to the Shipman Inquiry.
In his post he leads a small team (UnderstandingUncertainty.org) which attempts to improve the way in which the quantitative aspects of risk and uncertainty are discussed in society. He works closely with the Millennium Mathematics Project in trying to bring risk and uncertainty into education. He gives many presentations to schools and others, advises organisations on risk communication, and is a regular newspaper columnist and radio presenter on current risk issues. In 2012, he hosted the BBC Four documentary “Tails You Win: The Science of Chance”, which described the application of probability in everyday life.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005 and awarded an OBE in 2006 for services to medical statistics.