Videos

The Darwin College lecture series this year is on the subject of Risk.

David Spiegelhalter's proper title is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk. He is in two minds (literally) about playing it safe or chucking caution to the wind. Decisions, decisions!? Are bacon sandwiches really that dangerous and is it wise to drive when you love cycling? David shows us how to use statistics to face up to life's major risks.

Taking another look at the UK National Lottery, David Spiegelhalter discusses the amazingly long gaps during which some numbers simply never appear. There's further reading at http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/39 where you can also play with the animation directly.

In this video David Spiegelhalter talks about uncertainty in major league football. How much is a team's league position due to luck and how much is due to skill?

Artist Chris Jordan shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images picture some almost unimaginable statistics -- like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day.

Given enough opportunities for something unlikely to happen, it's very likely that it will. David Spiegelhalter demonstrates this using a simple number matching game. There is further reading on our Coincidences thread where you can also play with the animation directly.

For 9 years, ball 38 was the most frequently drawn number, but what does this mean? In this video David Spiegelhalter takes a look at the data. There's further reading on this on our National Lottery pages where you can also play with the animations directly.

Here's a selection from Youtube on uncertainty and risk, serious and not-serious. Please send us links to any others you would recommend.

David giving the Winton lecture at Imperial.

Peter Donnelly FRS FMedSci, Professor of Statistical Science (Dept Statistics) & Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics talks at Ted.