ICMS: 2021 Fitch Lecture

The first Fitch lecture will be given by Professor John Aston on Wednesday 5 May 2021 at 14.00 BST.

This online event will be hosted on Zoom. Ticket holders will receive an email on the day of the event, with instructions on how to join the lecture and subsequent Q&A. Registration will close at 09.00 BST on the day of the event.

John Aston - Statistics, Science and Government: A Statistician as a CSA

• Statistics and data have always had a role in government, and censuses, for example, have been carried out for thousands of years to allow governments to make decisions. As a departmental chief scientific adviser, it was always important to me to make sure that the evidence was well considered in the policy-making process. In this talk, I'll give some examples of how statistics was combined with other science in the policy process, and how hopefully the current appetite for science in government will continue to lead to better and better policy decisions. I very much hope this will encourage other mathematicians and statisticians to consider getting involved in science advice for themselves.

John Aston, Harding Professor of Statistics in Public Life, is based in the Statistical Laboratory, Dept of Pure Maths and Mathematical Statistics at the University of Cambridge. From 2017-2020 he was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Home Office. He is an applied statistician who works in areas including medical imaging and official statistics, and was a founding director of the Alan Turing Institute.

Timings (all times BST):

14.00 - Introduction, Iain Gordon (University of Edinburgh)

14.05 - Lecture, John Aston

14.45 - Q&A

15.00 - Event Ends