School of Mathematics

Colin Aitken awarded the Howard Medal by the Royal Statistical Society

The Howard Medal is awarded to Colin Aitken, whose work is an outstanding example of how a statistician can integrate with those in a substantive area. He has specialised in statistical reasoning in the law and forensic science and has engaged extensively with practitioners in these areas, developing software for their use and publishing in that applied literature. He has authored a highly regarded and wide-ranging book that brings together a range of techniques (statistics and the evaluation of evidence for forensic scientists) as well as a number of guides for practitioners. He set up the Statistics and the Law section section at the Royal Statistical Society. He has collaborated extensively with practitioners covering areas such as detecting cocaine in banknotes and the use of Bayesian belief networks in the analysis of criminal evidence, in which area he has co-authored a recent book. https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/3702-rss-announces-recipients-of-2018-honours