Maths Off Piste 2017

Forest School’s Maths Off Piste 2017 will take place on Thursday 19 October, 4.15pm – 5.15pm at the Deaton Theatre.

Our guest speaker is Dr Jennifer Rogers, who is a lead statistician whose research is used to help analyse medical conditions such as heart failure, epilepsy and cancer as well as being applied to retail and engineering. She currently holds the position of Director of Statistical Consultancy Services at the University of Oxford.

The title of her talk is “Yeah – But it is Significant”.

In a clinical trial for chronic headaches, 40% of people get better within 24 hours. But so what, these things happen just by chance, right? As a statistician, it’s Jen’s job to decide whether any differences she sees in data are likely to be just by chance, or whether they are ‘statistically significant’. But how much evidence do you need before you can say what you see is significant? And what do the numbers mean? This talk will also explain how risk is communicated in the media and explore our relationship with the risks that we see.