Hosted by the Department of Statistics

Peter Donnelly FRS, FMedSci (University of Oxford and Oxford Wellcome Trust)

The Genetic Revolution (poster )

Genetic factors are responsible for a substantial part of the susceptibility to all of the common diseases afflicting humans, including heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, depression, and many cancers and infectious diseases. Recent advances in genomic science have dramatically altered our ability to "read" genetic differences between people, leading to an explosion in our understanding of the genetic basis of most common human diseases. These new tools have led to an explosion in the amount and nature of genetic data available, with statistical analysis methods critical to the scientific progress. It won't be long before these changes have an impact on the practice of clinical medicine. Over a longer timeframe, they offer hope for new treatments for disease, and genetics is likely to become routine in some parts of medicine. The talk, aimed at a general audience, will give a sense of the excitement of the science and some of the statistical challenges, as well as the opportunities and challenges for our health and society.

Date: Wednesday 2nd May 2012

Peter Donnelly · Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics

Peter Donnelly

Hosted by the Mathematics Institute

Hendrik Lenstra (University of California at Berkeley and University of Leiden)

Escher and the Droste Effect (poster )

This lecture is to shed light on the mind-bending art of Dutch artist Escher by taking a closer look at the mathematics behind his images. Professor Lenstra will look at Escher's 1956 work The Print Gallery, which depicts a swirling impossible world centred around a mysterious hole in the middle of the image.

The lecture will offer a fascinating insight into how art and maths work together. People often think of mathematics as something extremely specialised and abstract which is just not relevant to their daily lives. But the opposite is in fact true - mathematics runs through so much, whether it's the banking system or the music we listen to. It's not often you see mathematics and art together on the same bill but Escher's works are a great illustration of how the two are interlinked.

Date: Monday 28th November 2011

Hendrik W Lenstra · Official Escher website · Droste effect · Hear Hendrik's lecture online

Hendrik Lenstra

Hosted by the Department of Statistics

David J Spiegelhalter OBE, FRS (Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge)

Living with risk and uncertainty — we're all going to die (sometime)

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, taking illegal drugs, going into hospital 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.

Date: Monday 22nd November 2010

David Spiegelhalter · Understanding Uncertainty (blog) · Hear David's lecture online

David Spiegelhalter