New Chapter Author Mornings give the opportunity to meet fascinating writers and discuss their work and help raise funds for Parkinson’s UK.

We live in an age of ‘big data’, with more information than ever before. But the sheer quantity of data can make it even more difficult to draw reliable conclusions from the numbers.

In The Art of Statistics, David Spiegelhalter guides us through the essential principles we need in order to derive knowledge from data, showing us why data can never speak for itself. Our new faith in big data is so often misplaced, he argues, and without the intervention of human creativity and questioning, data remains mute and our statistics flawed. Drawing on real-world examples from current science and the media, his own career and the distance past, Spiegelhalter shows us how statistics can help us determine the signal from the noise.

Sir David Spiegelhalter is a British statistician and Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Spiegelhalter is one of the most cited and influential researchers in his field and was elected as President of the Royal Statistical Society for 2017-18. As a statistician, he was called to give evidence at the public inquiry into Dr Harold Shipman, which concluded the extent of his victims. Listen back to his BBC Radio 4 Life Scientific.

11am: Coffee
11.30am: Talk

In aid of Parkinson’s UK.