David John Hand (born 30 June 1950 in

Peterborough Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...

)Prof David Hand Authorised Biography
at Debrett's ''People of Today''. Accessed 2011-01-27. is a British

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

. His research interests include

multivariate statistics Multivariate statistics is a subdivision of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one outcome variable. Multivariate statistics concerns understanding the different aims and background of each of the dif ...

, classification methods,

pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...

computational statistics Computational statistics, or statistical computing, is the bond between statistics and computer science. It means statistical methods that are enabled by using computational methods. It is the area of computational science (or scientific computi ...

and the

foundations of statistics The foundations of statistics concern the epistemological debate in statistics over how one should conduct inductive inference from data. Among the issues considered in statistical inference are the question of Bayesian inference versus frequentist ...

. He has written technical books on statistics, data mining, finance, classification methods, and measuring wellbeing, as well as science popularisation books including ''The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day''; ''Dark Data: Why What You Don’t Know Matters''; and ''Statistics: A Very Short Introduction''. In 1991 he launched the journal '' Statistics and Computing'', which is now celebrating its third decade.

Education

Hand was educated at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

and the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

where he was awarded a PhD in 1977 for research supervised by .

Career and research

Hand served as professor of statistics at the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

from 1988 until 1999, when he moved to

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

, where he is now

Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Professor of Mathematics. Between 2010 and 2018 he took an extended

sabbatical A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work. The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Biblical practice of ''shmita'' (sabbatical year), which is related to agriculture. According to ...

to serve as chief scientific advisor at

Winton Capital Management Winton Group, Ltd (which includes Winton Capital Management) is a British investment management firm founded by David Harding. In the United States, Winton is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment advisor and with ...

. He served as president of the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

from 2008 to 2009, then again in 2010 after

Bernard Silverman Sir Bernard Walter Silverman, (born 22 February 1952) is a British statistician and former Anglican clergyman. He was Master of St Peter's College, Oxford, from 1 October 2003 to 31 December 2009. He is a member of the Statistics Department a ...

stood down.

Books

Hand has published 31 books, inter alia: * 2001. ''Principles of Data Mining''(with Mannila H. and Smyth P). ''Principles of Data Mining''. MIT Press. * 2007. ''Measurement Theory and Practice: the World Through Quantification'' * 2014. (with Paul Allin). ''The Wellbeing of Nations: Meaning, Motive and Measurement''. Wiley.(with Paul Allin). ''The Wellbeing of Nations: Meaning, Motive and Measurement''. Wiley. * 2014. ''The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles and Rare Events Happen All the Time''''The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles and Rare Events Happen All the Time''. Farrar Straus Giroux. * 2020. ''From GDP to Sustainable Wellbeing: Changing Statistics or Changing Lives?'' 2020. (with Paul Allin) ''From GDP to Sustainable Wellbeing: Changing Statistics or Changing Lives?'' Palgrave Macmillan, * 2020. ''Dark Data: Why What You Don’t Know Matters''Dark Data: Why What You Don’t Know Matters

Articles

Hand has published over 300 scientific articles, inter alia: * Hand D.J. and Henley W.E. (1997) Statistical classification methods in consumer credit scoring: a review. ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society'', Series A, 160, 523-541 * Hand D.J., Blunt G., Kelly M.G., and Adams N.M. (2000) Data mining for fun and profit. ''Statistical Science'', 15, 111-131 * Hand D.J. and Yu K. (2001) Idiot’s Bayes - not so stupid after all? ''International Statistical Review'', 69, 385-398 * Bolton R.J. and Hand D.J. (2002) Statistical fraud detection: a review. ''Statistical Science'', 17, 235-255 * Hand D.J. (2006) Classifier technology and the illusion of progress (with discussion). ''Statistical Science'', 21, 1-34 * 2008. ''Top 10 algorithms in data mining''with

Ross Quinlan John Ross Quinlan is a computer science researcher in data mining and decision theory. He has contributed extensively to the development of decision tree algorithms, including inventing the canonical C4.5 and ID3 algorithms. He also contributed to ...

Qiang Yang Qiang Yang () (born 1963) is the Chair Professor, Department Head of CSE, HKUST in Hong Kong and University New Bright Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor from 2015. He was the founding head of Noah's Ark Lab. He had taught at the Unive ...

, Philip S. Yu and

Zhou Zhihua Zhou Zhi-Hua (; born November 20, 1973) is a Professor of Computer Science at Nanjing University. He is the Standing Deputy Director othe National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology and Founding Director of thLAMDA Group His research in ...

et al.. ''Knowledge and Information Systems'' 14.1: 1-37 * Hand D.J. (2009) Measuring classifier performance: a coherent alternative to the area under the ROC curve. ''Machine Learning'', 77, 103-123 * Hand D.J. (2018) Statistical challenges of administrative and transaction data (with discussion). ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society'', Series A, 181, 555-605

Awards and honours

Hand has received various awards for his work, including being elected Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 1999, the Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society in 2002, the IEEE ICDM Outstanding Contributions Award in 2004, the Credit Collections and Risk Award for Contributions to the Credit Industry in 2012, the George Box Medal for Business and Industrial Statistics in 2016, and the International Federation of Classification Societies Research Medal in 2019. He was appointed

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(OBE) in the

2013 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 2013 were appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to Orders and decorations of the Commonwealth realms, various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Hon ...

for services to research and innovation. He was elected a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # C ...

(FBA) in 2003. In April 2013 until June 2021 he served on the board of the board of the

UK Statistics Authority cy, Y Bwrdd Ystadegau , seal = , logo = UK Statistics Authority logo.svg , formed = , jurisdiction = United Kingdom , headquarters = 1 Drummond Gate London SW1V 2QQ , employees = 3685 , budget = £256m (2018) , minister1_name = Jeremy ...

as a non-executive director and served on the European Statistical Advisory Committee, advising the European Commission from 2016-2021. He chaired the Administrative Data Research Network from 2014-2017 and serves on many other advisory committees, including chairing the Advisory Board of the ONS’s Centre for Applied Data Ethics and the National Statistician's Expert User Advisory Committee.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hand, David Living people 1950 births British statisticians Officers of the Order of the British Empire People from Peterborough Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society Fellows of the British Academy Academics of the Open University Academics of Imperial College London Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Alumni of the University of Southampton