RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Council has appointed David Spiegelhalter as Guy Lecturer for 2010.

A Guy Lecturer is appointed each year and prepares the RSS Schools Lecture which is aimed at sixth form and GCSE students and draws out the importance and widespread applicability of statistics in a serious but accessible and entertaining way. The official delivery of this lecture takes place at a school once in the year, and it is available for repeat deliveries at other schools that request it. It is also available to be hosted by universities as part of outreach programmes; this has occurred on several occasions during past years.

Information about the history and evolution of the lecture is available on the website, in the ‘education and qualifications’ section. You can go straight to it via the quick jump facility on the main home page: look for RSS Schools Lecture (Guy Lecture).

Previous Guy Lecturers have been Adrian Smith, Adrian Bowman, Peter Holmes, Frank Duckworth, John Haigh, Susan Starkings, Neil Sheldon, Phil Woodward and Keith Parramore.

Keith is still completing his programme of lectures, which has so far included sessions at Kingston, Pontypridd, Bracknell, Cardiff and Redditch.

The Society has an impressive portfolio of present and past Guy Lecturers who are willing to give their talks. A brief summary of all the past lectures that are still available is given on the website.

Moving on to David's lecture, its title is ‘Living with risk and uncertainty’. He has given the following summary of it.

‘Past experience and probability theory can be used to check the odds of your football team winning or judge the risks of activities such as riding motorcycles, hang-gliding or just living. Things get more difficult when we don't fully understand what is going on, like early on in the swine-flu epidemic, or when we are dealing with huge complexity, as in climate change. Then it can be helpful to admit what we don’t know, and I shall show how we can use probability and statistics to measure how ignorant you are.’

Many readers may have heard David give this lecture, or something similar, and will know that it is extremely interesting, stimulating, entertaining and thought-provoking.

Any teachers who would like to discuss how their schools might be able to host lectures are invited to contact Sarah Barker at the Society 020 7614 3915). It is intended that the host schools, particularly for the official delivery, will be able to make arrangements to accommodate pupils from many other schools in the neighbourhood.