How many trees are there on the planet?
Do busier hospitals have higher survival rates?
Who was the luckiest passenger on the Titanic?
Could Harold Shipman have been caught sooner?

We live in an age of ‘big data’, with more information than ever before. But the sheer quantity of data can make it even more difficult to draw reliable conclusions from the numbers.

In our latest Data Book Club event, we'll be hearing from Sir David Spiegelhalter about his book The Art of Statistics. The book guides us through the essential principles we need in order to derive knowledge from data, showing us why data can never speak for itself.

Our new faith in big data is so often misplaced, he argues, and without the intervention of human creativity and questioning, data remains mute and our statistics flawed. Drawing on real world examples from current science and the media, his own career and the distance past, Spiegelhalter shows us how statistics can help us determine the signal from the noise.

Sir David Spiegelhalter is a British statistician and Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Spiegelhalter is one of the most cited and influential researchers in his field, and was elected as President of the Royal Statistical Society for 2017-18. As a statistician he was called to give evidence at the public inquiry into Dr Harold Shipman, which concluded the extent of his victims.

Ticket includes chance to hear Sir David talk about the book as well as a copy of 'The Art of Statistics'.