Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter

Professor of The Public Understand of Risk
University of Cambridge

Topics:

Featured Motivational & Inspirational

Expertise:

The Art of Uncertaintiy

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS OBE is Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the University of Cambridge. He was previously Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, which aimed to improve the way that statistical evidence is used by health professionals, patients, lawyers and judges, media and policy-makers. He is a regular media commentator on statistical issues, with a particular focus on communicating uncertainty. He was very busy over the Covid crisis.

He presented the BBC4 documentaries “Tails you Win: the Science of Chance” and the award-winning “Climate Change by Numbers”. His bestselling book, The Art of Statistics, was published in March 2019, Covid by Numbers in September 2021, and The Art of Uncertainty in 2024. His career highlights include appearing on Desert Island Discs in 2022, and in 2011 coming 7^th in an episode of BBC1’s Winter Wipeout.

He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005, awarded an OBE in 2006, and knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics. He was President of the Royal Statistical Society for 2017-2018, and has been a Non-Executive Director of the UK Statistics Authority since 2020.

‘Probably the UK’s greatest living statistician’ Telegraph

From the UK’s ‘statistical national treasure’, a clever and data-driven guide to how we can live with risk and uncertainty

We live in a world where uncertainty is inevitable. How should we deal with what we don’t know? And what role do chance, luck and coincidence play in our lives?

David Spiegelhalter has spent his career dissecting data in order to understand risks and assess the chances of what might happen in the future. In The Art of Uncertainty, he gives readers a window onto how we can all do this better.

In engaging, crystal-clear prose, he takes us through the principles of probability, showing how it can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to pandemics and climate change forecasts, and explores how we can update our beliefs about the future in the face of constantly changing experience. Along the way, he explains why roughly 40% of football results come down to luck rather than talent, how the National Risk Register assesses near-term risks to the United Kingdom, and why we can be so confident that two properly shuffled packs of cards have never, ever been in the exact same order.

Drawing on a wide range of captivating real-world examples, this is an essential guide to navigating uncertainty while also having the humility to admit what we do not know