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We are working with the Met Office on a project comparing alternative ways of presenting uncertainty about short-term weather forecasts, and have a 6-month internship available for a PhD student. See this link for details.

The Daily Mail has a story today about the Allali family whose third child was born on the same date as his two older siblings, claiming that "mathematical experts have revealed that the three siblings have beaten odds of 48 million to one". If these are the real odds, isn't a bit strange how often this story appears in the papers?

A recent study showed no evidence of an adverse effect of moderate consumption of alcohol during pregnancy and subsequent child development. But the Department of Health has commented "After assessing the available evidence, we cannot say with confidence that drinking during pregnancy is safe and will not harm your baby. Therefore, as a precautionary measure, our advice to pregnant women and women trying to conceive is to avoid alcohol."
Is this still a tenable position?

The Inter-Academy Council (IAC) recently produced a report on the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) which got a lot of publicity, but almost no coverage was given to what the IAC said about the IPCC's way of handling uncertainty. It makes interesting reading.

Article in today's Times included below. I should have included the important observation that even if Paul's final two predictions are correct, it does not change my total belief that he is not psychic and the results are just chance. Essentially when a hypothesis has zero initial probability, no amount of surprising evidence will shift that belief. Oh dear, what a closed-minded person I am.

This is an article that appeared in the Times on Friday July 2nd - sadly everyone now has to pay to access Times articles online.

We have an article on micromorts in Plus this month, featuring a simple but effective animation for comparing risks of different activities.

Who is exposed to the greater lethal risk: a member of the UK forces serving in Afghanistan, or an average patient spending the night in an English hospital? Of course the question can’t be answered exactly: it all depends on who we mean and how we measure risk. But statistics can give us a ball-park figure that may be surprising.

Here is the spreadsheet showing the way in which my predictions were made. I hope it is comprehensible, at least for enthusiasts! I discussed this on the Today programme the day before the matches.