David Spiegelhalter: COVID statistics, thinking about risk in life and medicine

Ben Yeoh Chats

David Spiegelhalter is an expert on medical statistics. He was the president of the Royal Statistical Society and is Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence communication. He is also a World Champion, in a version of pool called Loop and hosts his own podcast, Risky Talk. David has a new book out (with Anthony Masters), COVID by Numbers, which is an excellent book on COVID statistics. This follows his previous bestseller, the Art of Statistics.

David discusses what was most surprising and misunderstood about COVID statistics. David emphasises how numbers can be emotional and weaponised and what we can do to protect ourselves.

We chat about what thinking about risk and techniques we should teach children and think about in every day life. Ideas such as baseline risk and absolute vs relative risk.

We think about unintended consequences, the agency challenges of regulators and how to think of a range of risk. David explains fat tails and extreme values and that, for instance, AI risk is an extreme existential risk but perhaps over rated.

I learn about the “Rose Paradox” and “Cromwell’s law”, in statistics. The Rose paradox suggests policy might be useful at a general population level but not at an individual basis. For instance, government messages about drinking less and things like that can be rational at the population level and yet it's also rational for individuals to take no notice of it.

Cromwell’s law implies many life events are not 0% or 100% and you should take that into account in decision making. Or, in plain English, you should always imagine there's something you haven't thought of.

We discuss the risks of alcohol and touch on air pollution and cholesterol (statin drugs), and how to think about medical statistics.

David explains the attraction and beauty of stained glass art.

David ends with life advice about enjoying life and taking (good, well-managed) risks in order to have a fulfilling life.

Transcript and video are available here.