2016 AAAS Annual Meeting (February 11-15, 2016)

February 10 - 15, 2016

David Spiegelhalter: Can Your Lifestyle Make You Older or Younger? Metaphors for Communicating Chronic Risks

Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk, Cambridge University Dr. David Spiegelhalter is a statistician who focuses on the appropriate use of quantitative methods in dealing with risk and uncertainty in the lives of individuals and society. His background is in medical statistics, particularly the use of Bayesian methods in clinical trials, health technology assessment, and drug safety. His website (UnderstandingUncertainty.org) features a wide range of resources, and he works closely with the U.K. Millennium Mathematics Project to bring risk and uncertainty into education. He presented the BBC4 documentaries “Tails You Win: The Science of Chance” and “Climate Change by Numbers.” He gives many presentations to schools and others, advises organizations on risk communication, and is a regular media commentator on risk and statistics. He has over 200 refereed publications and is co-author of 6 textbooks, as well as The Norm Chronicles (with Michael Blastland) and Sex by Numbers. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics. His greatest achievement happened in 2011 when he finished 7th in an episode of Winter Wipeout on BBC1.