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

'A statistical national treasure' Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2 'Required reading for all politicians, journalists, medics and anyone who tries to influence people (or is influenced) by statistics. A tour de force' Popular Science Do busier hospitals have higher survival rates? How many trees are there on the planet? Why do old men have big ears? David Spiegelhalter reveals the answers to these and many other questions - questions that can only be addressed using statistical science. Statistics has played a leading role in our scientific understanding of the world for centuries, yet we are all familiar with the way statistical claims can be sensationalised, particularly in the media. In the age of big data, as data science becomes established as a discipline, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever. In The Art of Statistics, David Spiegelhalter guides the reader through the essential principles we need in order to derive knowledge from data. Drawing on real world problems to introduce conceptual issues, he shows us how statistics can help us determine the luckiest passenger on the Titanic, whether serial killer Harold Shipman could have been caught earlier, and if screening for ovarian cancer is beneficial. 'Shines a light on how we can use the ever-growing deluge of data to improve our understanding of the world' Nature

In a family study of breast cancer, epidemiologists in Southern California increase the power for detecting a gene-environment interaction. In Gambia, a study helps a vaccination program reduce the incidence of Hepatitis B carriage. Archaeologists in Austria place a Bronze Age site in its true temporal location on the calendar scale. And in France, researchers map a rare disease with relatively little variation.
Each of these studies applied Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to produce more accurate and inclusive results. General state-space Markov chain theory has seen several developments that have made it both more accessible and more powerful to the general statistician. Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Practice introduces MCMC methods and their applications, providing some theoretical background as well. The authors are researchers who have made key contributions in the recent development of MCMC methodology and its application.
Considering the broad audience, the editors emphasize practice rather than theory, keeping the technical content to a minimum. The examples range from the simplest application, Gibbs sampling, to more complex applications. The first chapter contains enough information to allow the reader to start applying MCMC in a basic way. The following chapters cover main issues, important concepts and results, techniques for implementing MCMC, improving its performance, assessing model adequacy, choosing between models, and applications and their domains.
Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Practice is a thorough, clear introduction to the methodology and applications of this simple idea with enormous potential. It shows the importance of MCMC in real applications, such as archaeology, astronomy, biostatistics, genetics, epidemiology, and image analysis, and provides an excellent base for MCMC to be applied to other fields as well.

Meet Norm. He's 31, 5'9", just over 13 stone, and works a 39 hour week. He likes a drink, doesn't do enough exercise and occasionally treats himself to a bar of chocolate (milk). He's a pretty average kind of guy. In fact, he is the average guy in this clever and unusual take on statistical risk, chance, and how these two factors affect our everyday choices. Watch as Norm (who, like all average specimens, feels himself to be uniquely special), and his friends careful Prudence and reckless Kelvin, turns to statistics to help him in life's endless series of choices - should I fly or take the train? Have a baby? Another drink? Or another sausage? Do a charity skydive or get a lift on a motorbike? Because chance and risk aren't just about numbers - it's about what we believe, who we trust and how we feel about the world around us. From a world expert in risk and the bestselling author of The Tiger That Isn't (and creator of BBC Radio 4's More or Less), this is a commonsense (and wildly entertaining) guide to personal risk and decoding the statistics that represent it.

Bayesian statistical methods have become widely used for data analysis and modelling in recent years, and the BUGS software has become the most popular software for Bayesian analysis worldwide. Authored by the team that originally developed this software, The BUGS Book provides a practical introduction to this program and its use. The text presents complete coverage of all the functionalities of BUGS, including prediction, missing data, model criticism, and prior sensitivity. It also features a large number of worked examples and a wide range of applications from various disciplines. The book introduces regression models, techniques for criticism and comparison, and a wide range of modelling issues before going into the vital area of hierarchical models, one of the most common applications of Bayesian methods. It deals with essentials of modelling without getting bogged down in complexity. The book emphasises model criticism, model comparison, sensitivity analysis to alternative priors, and thoughtful choice of prior distributions all those aspects of the "art" of modelling that are easily overlooked in more theoretical expositions. More pragmatic than ideological, the authors systematically work through the large range of "tricks" that reveal the real power of the BUGS software, for example, dealing with missing data, censoring, grouped data, prediction, ranking, parameter constraints, and so on. Many of the examples are biostatistical, but they do not require domain knowledge and are generalisable to a wide range of other application areas. Full code and data for examples, exercises, and some solutions can be found on the book's website.

Bayesian statistical methods have become widely used for data analysis and modelling in recent years, and the BUGS software has become the most popular software for Bayesian analysis worldwide. Authored by the team that originally developed this software, The BUGS Book provides a practical introduction to this program and its use. The text presents complete coverage of all the functionalities of BUGS, including prediction, missing data, model criticism, and prior sensitivity. It also features a large number of worked examples and a wide range of applications from various disciplines. The book introduces regression models, techniques for criticism and comparison, and a wide range of modelling issues before going into the vital area of hierarchical models, one of the most common applications of Bayesian methods. It deals with essentials of modelling without getting bogged down in complexity. The book emphasises model criticism, model comparison, sensitivity analysis to alternative priors, and thoughtful choice of prior distributions-all those aspects of the "art" of modelling that are easily overlooked in more theoretical expositions. More pragmatic than ideological, the authors systematically work through the large range of "tricks" that reveal the real power of the BUGS software, for example, dealing with missing data, censoring, grouped data, prediction, ranking, parameter constraints, and so on. Many of the examples are biostatistical, but they do not require domain knowledge and are generalisable to a wide range of other application areas. Full code and data for examples, exercises, and some solutions can be found on the book's website.

'I couldn't imagine a better guidebook for making sense of a tragic and momentous time in our lives. Covid by Numbers is comprehensive yet concise, impeccably clear and always humane' Tim Harford How many people have died because of COVID-19? Which countries have been hit hardest by the virus? What are the benefits and harms of different vaccines? How does COVID-19 compare to the Spanish flu? How have the lockdown measures affected the economy, mental health and crime? This year we have been bombarded by statistics - seven day rolling averages, rates of infection, excess deaths. Never have numbers been more central to our national conversation, and never has it been more important that we think about them clearly. In the media and in their Observer column, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter and RSS Statistical Ambassador Anthony Masters have interpreted these statistics, offering a vital public service by giving us the tools we need to make sense of the virus for ourselves and holding the government to account. In Covid by Numbers, they crunch the data on a year like no other, exposing the leading misconceptions about the virus and the vaccine, and answering our essential questions. This timely, concise and approachable book offers a rare depth of insight into one of the greatest upheavals in history, and a trustworthy guide to these most uncertain of times.

Written by leading subject specialists, Teaching Probability is designed to support teaching concepts in probability by providing a new approach to this difficult subject from a perspective not limited by a syllabus, giving teachers both theoretical and practical knowledge of an innovative way of teaching probability. This alternative approach to teaching probability focuses on the methods that teachers can apply to help their students engage with the topic using experiments and mathematical models to solve problems, considering how to overcome common misconceptions and the way in which probability can be communicated.

Is it safer to fly or take the train? How dangerous is skydiving? And is eating that extra sausage going to kill you? We've all heard the statistics for risky activities, but what do they mean in the real world? In "The Norm Chronicles," journalist Michael Blastland and risk expert David Spiegelhalter explore these questions through the stories of average Norm and an ingenious measurement called the MicroMort--a one in a million chance of dying. They reveal why general anesthesia is as dangerous as a parachute jump, giving birth in the US is nearly twice as risky as in the UK, and that the radiation from eating a banana shaves 3 seconds off your life. An entertaining guide to the statistics of personal risk, "The Norm Chronicles" will enlighten anyone who has ever worried about the dangers we encounter in our daily lives.

Meet Norm. He's 31, 5'9", just over 13 stone, and works a 39 hour week. He likes a drink, doesn't do enough exercise and occasionally treats himself to a bar of chocolate (milk). He's a pretty average kind of guy. In fact, he is the average guy in this clever and unusual take on statistical risk, chance, and how these two factors affect our everyday choices. Watch as Norm (who, like all average specimens, feels himself to be uniquely special), and his friends careful Prudence and reckless Kelvin, turns to statistics to help him in life's endless series of choices - should I fly or take the train? Have a baby? Another drink? Or another sausage? Do a charity skydive or get a lift on a motorbike? Because chance and risk aren't just about numbers - it's about what we believe, who we trust and how we feel about the world around us. What we do, or don't do, has as much do with gut instinct as hard facts, with enjoyment as understanding. If you've ever wondered what the statistics in tabloid scare stories really mean, how dangerous horse-riding is compared to class-A drugs, or what governs coincidence, you will find it all here. From a world expert in risk and the bestselling author of The Tiger That Isn't (and creator of BBC Radio 4's More or Less), this is a commonsense (and wildly entertaining) guide to personal risk and decoding the statistics that represent it.