Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Public Lecture 2021

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS OBE will present the 2021 Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Public Lecture on Tuesday, 9 November. The Ollerenshaw Lecture is a prestigious annual lecture in the Department of Mathematics at The University of Manchester, named in honour and recognition of Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw. Read more about Kathleen's life on the Department of Mathematics blog. David will offer some personal insights into the challenges of trying to bring illumination to the statistics about the pandemic, illustrated with examples of things have gone fairly well, as well as communication disasters. In particular, he will focus on the challenges of combatting the constant pressure to speculate, blame, recommend policies, and go outside one's area of expertise, and the overwhelming importance of trustworthy communication. Professor Spiegelhalter is Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, which aims to improve the way that statistical evidence is used by health professionals, patients, lawyers and judges, media and policy-makers. He has been very busy over the COVID crisis: he presented the BBC4 documentaries "Tails you Win: the Science of Chance", the award-winning "Climate Change by Numbers", and in 2011 came 7th in an episode of BBC1's Winter Wipeout.