When the Reverend Thomas Bayes died in 1761 he left behind two
revolutionary ideas: expressing our uncertainty about current or future
states of the world as a probability distribution, and how to revise our
probabilities in the light of experience. The talk will include some selected modern applications of these
concepts, such as catching doping athletes, predicting volcanic
eruptions, gambling and weather forecasting. The speaker, Professor David Spiegelhalter, will also be
checking whether the audience knows how ignorant they are. The lecture is part of a 3-day workshop in Bayesian Statistics, jointly organised by the Schools of Mathematics and Informatics. It is wonderful to see that the local media are as excited about this event as we are, with articles in the BBC, Scottish Television, the Edinburgh Evening News, the Metro, the Daily Record and the Courier.
The university is hosting a public lecture today to
commemorate the 250th anniversary of the death of The Reverend Thomas
Bayes, an eminent statistician and former student of The University of
Edinburgh.
