Terry Speed, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
AUSTRALIA 2025: How will science address the challenges of the future? In collaboration with Australia’s chief scientist Ian Chubb, we’re asking how each science discipline will contribute to Australia…
Crystal ball view of the tournament to come.
The Conversation
It’s World Cup crunch time. The group stages are over and it will be knockout games to the final from here on in. From the performances we’ve seen so far, there are numerous contenders for the title. Brazil…
Tracking technology using video or GPS chips have transformed the ability of coaches in elite team sports to monitor the physical contributions of players in games. This type of data is usually highly…
It’s game on for tiki-taka and Spain.
Guilaume Horcajuelo/EPA/
Spain is out of the World Cup. They have a final consolation game against Australia, who were on the wrong end of a thrilling 3-2 defeat to Netherlands, but the biggest upset is the exit of the cup holders…
Spain took home the 2010 World Cup trophy – can they do it again this year?
EPA/Peter Klaunzer
It doesn’t matter if you’re a hard-core football nut, a once-every-four-years fan or even a psychic animal – most of us speculate on the winner of the World Cup. The 2014 competition is held in Brazil…
Sorry Rick – you should’ve been left behind about three decades ago (along with some algorithms).
Claudio Poblete/Flickr
It’s an exciting time to be doing statistics. You heard me – statistics: exciting. It often gets a bad rap, but stats is after all at the business end of the research process. When I’ve collaborated on…
If the UK’s Molly doesn’t luck out, it’s not due to collusion.
EPA/Joerg Carstensen
It’s that time of the year again. One of the biggest events in Europe’s (and the world’s) cultural calendar, the Eurovision song contest is legendary. The attention paid to this bizarre show is enormous…
A 2% rise next year instead? You have my word.
Rui Vieira/PA
The government’s decision to reject the recommended 1% rise in NHS salaries has been met with “contempt” by the unions. The issue of public sector pay has become highly contentious, with each side arguing…
The media are always fascinated by medical “breakthrough” stories: tales of hope that scientists have found cures for our most threatening diseases and tales of woe that our lifestyles are doing us harm…
Carsten Holz, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The world’s second-largest economy has become the second-most watched and yet investors, politicians and economists are never quite clear what it is they’re looking at. China’s premier, Li Keqiang, is…
So the International Monetary Fund has revised its economic growth forecast for the UK upwards. It now expects 2.4% growth in the UK this year, up from the 1.9% they predicted a few months back. Cue celebratory…
Corporate data, once resigned to magnetic tapes, is now able to be manipulated on a much finer grained scale.
TunnelBug/Flickr
The crucial thing about “big data” is the data. “Big” is relative, and while size often matters, real disruption can come from data of any size. This is not a new idea, being several hundred years old…
Statistics can’t tell us everything: p values are only the start of the problem.
chrisinplymouth
Yesterday’s article by Geoff Cumming, based on a very recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Science paper, argued that “null hypothesis significance tests” (NHST) are flawed – and he is correct…
A p value of .05 has been the default ‘significance’ threshold for nearly 90 years … but is that standard too weak?
Martin_Heigan
For researchers there’s a lot that turns on the p value, the number used to determine whether a result is statistically significant. The current consensus is that if p is less than .05, a study has reached…
Terry Speed plus maths and stats equals Prime Minister’s Prize for Science 2013.
WEHI
Terry Speed, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
The Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science recognise excellence in science and science teaching. This year, we asked three prizewinners to reflect on their work and factors that influenced their careers…
Professor Terence Paul Speed wins the coveted Prime Minister’s Prize for Science at age 70.
Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science/Bearcage
Australian mathematician and statistician Terry Speed has been awarded the 2013 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science for giving biologists the statistical tools needed to fight cancer, and for a lifetime…
Adam Kucharski, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
When people talk about ‘big data’, there is an oft-quoted example: a proposed public health tool called Google Flu Trends. It has become something of a pin-up for the big data movement, but it might not…
Adam Kucharski, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
It’s autumn, and a new batch of students are starting university. Some are walking through the ancient gates of an Oxbridge college. Others are joining a redbrick university like Manchester or Bristol…
‘Hug a hoodie’ as David Cameron would say.
ssoosay
Ann Hagell, Association for Young People's Health and John Coleman, University of Oxford
Smoking, drinking and hanging around street corners is a common characterisation of a bored, unhealthy, unemployed youth. Life is getting worse for young people, we’re often led to believe, but what do…
Wrong about migrants, wrong about benefits, wrong about choice of headgear.
Torsten Reimer (http://www.flickr.com/photos/torstenreimer)
People are wildly wrong when we ask them about many aspects of life in Britain, as shown in a new survey by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London. We think one in four…
Professor, Future Fellow and Head of Statistics at UNSW, and a Deputy Director of the Australian Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS), UNSW Sydney