Renowned British statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter will deliver a talk with the intriguing title ‘Sex, murder and COVID: how statistics are vital to understand the world’ to be held on Tuesday, March 15 at 7pm organised by ĊineXjenza and Spazju Kreattiv Cinema.
The pandemic has demonstrated how important data becomes at a time of crisis. But good data is also essential whenever we are faced with complex questions about what is going on in society.
In his talk, Sir David will tell stories from his own experience, ranging from investigating whether a serial murderer could have been caught earlier, to measuring human sexual behaviour, to showing that statistical and data science are vital skills in the modern world.
Spiegelhalter is chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Mathematical Sciences.
The centre aims to improve the way statistical evidence is used by health professionals, patients, lawyers and judges, media and policy-makers.
He presented the BBC4 documentaries Tails you Win: the Science of Chance, the award-winning Climate Change by Numbers, and in 2011 came seventh in an episode of BBC1’s Winter Wipeout.
During his presentation, he will use video clips from some of these BBC film productions.
His bestselling book, The Art of Statistics, was published in March 2019, and COVID by Numbers came out in September 2021.
Sir David was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics, served as president of the Royal Statistical Society (2017-2018), and became a non-executive director of the UK Statistics Authority in 2020.
ĊineXjenza is supported by the STEAM project. It is run by S-Cubed, together with the Malta Chamber of Scientists, in collaboration with Spazju Kreattiv.
Sir David Spiegelhalter’s talk will be held on Tuesday, March 15, at 7pm, at Spazju Kreattiv Cinema, Castille Place, Valletta. For those who cannot attend the event in person the talk will be livestreamed on Spazju Kreattiv's Facebook page. To book a ticket, visit https://www.kreattivita.org/en/event/cinexjenza-sex-murder-and-covid/