Sir David John Spiegelhalter (born 16 August 1953) is a British statistician and a Fellow of

Churchill College, Cambridge Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establis ...

. From 2007 to 2018 he was

Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk The Winton Professorship of the Public Understanding of Risk is a professorship within the Statistical Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. It was established in 2007 in perpetuity by a benefaction of £3.3m from the Winton Charitable Foun ...

in the Statistical Laboratory at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. Spiegelhalter is an

ISI highly cited researcher The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analys ...

. He is currently Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

. On 27 May 2020 he joined the

board Board or Boards may refer to: Flat surface * Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat ** Plank (wood) ** Cutting board ** Sounding board, of a musical instrument * Cardboard (paper product) * Paperboard * Fiberboard ** Hardboard, a t ...

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 for a period of three years.

Early life and education

Spiegelhalter was born on 16 August 1953: his name means "Mirror holder" in German. He was educated at Barnstaple Grammar School, a

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

grammar school in

Barnstaple, Devon Barnstaple ( or ) is a river-port town in North Devon, England, at the River Taw's lowest crossing point before the Bristol Channel. From the 14th century, it was licensed to export wool and won great wealth. Later it imported Irish wool, but i ...

, from 1963 to 1970. He then studied mathematics at

Keble College, Oxford Keble College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to ...

, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1974. He moved to

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, where he gained his Master of Science (MSc) degree in statistics in 1975 and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in

mathematical statistics Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory, a branch of mathematics, to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. Specific mathematical techniques which are used for this include mathematical an ...

in 1978. His doctoral thesis was titled "Adaptive Inference Using Finite Mixture Models", and was supervised by

Adrian Smith Adrian Frederick "H" Smith (born 27 February 1957) is an English guitarist best known as a member of heavy metal band Iron Maiden, for whom he also writes songs and performs backing vocals both live and in the studio. Smith grew up in London ...

Career

Spiegelhalter was research assistant in

Brunel University Brunel University London is a public research university located in the Uxbridge area of London, England. It was founded in 1966 and named after the Victorian engineer and pioneer of the Industrial Revolution, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In Jun ...

in 1976 and then visiting lecturer at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, 1977–78. After his PhD, he was a research assistant for the

Royal College of Physicians The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) is a British professional membership body dedicated to improving the practice of medicine, chiefly through the accreditation of physicians by examination. Founded by royal charter from King Henry VIII in 1 ...

; he was based at the

University of Nottingham , mottoeng = A city is built on wisdom , established = 1798 – teacher training college1881 – University College Nottingham1948 – university status , type = Public , chancellor ...

, where his PhD supervisor,

, had been appointed a professor. From 1981 he was at the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge. He has been an honorary lecturer at the

University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong (HKU) (Chinese: 香港大學) is a public research university in Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hon ...

since 1991. He has also been a consultant for

GlaxoSmithKline GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London, England. Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. GSK is the tent ...

Novartis Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-lo ...

and the

World Anti-Doping Agency The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA; french: Agence mondiale antidopage, AMA) is a foundation initiated by the International Olympic Committee based in Canada to promote, coordinate, and monitor the fight against drugs in sports. The agency's key ...

. He played a leading role in the public inquiries into children's heart surgery at the

Bristol Royal Infirmary The Bristol Royal Infirmary, also known as the BRI, is a large teaching hospital situated in the centre of Bristol, England. It has links with the nearby University of Bristol and the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the University of the Wes ...

and the murders by Harold Shipman. Between 2007 and 2012 he divided his work between the Cambridge Statistical Laboratory (three-fifths) and the Medical Research Council

Biostatistics Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experimen ...

Unit (two-fifths). He left the MRC in March 2012 and worked full-time at the Statistical Laboratory as the

until his retirement. He remains chair of the Winton Centre. As of 2012 Spiegelhalter has supervised 7 PhD students. David_crop

In 2012, Spiegelhalter hosted the

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

documentary ''Tails You Win: The Science of Chance'' which described the application of

probability Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speaking, ...

in everyday life. He also presented a 2013

Cambridge Science Festival The Cambridge Science Festival was a series of events typically held annually in March in Cambridge, England and was the United Kingdom's largest free science festival. In 2019 it was announced that the Cambridge Science Festival and the Cambr ...

talk, ''How to Spot a Shabby Statistic'' at the Babbage Lecture Theatre in Cambridge. He was elected 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. ...

, and took up the position on 1 January 2017. In March 2020 Spiegelhalter launched a podcast called ''Risky Talk'' where he interviews experts in risk and evidence communication on topics like genetics, nutrition, climate change and immigration. He appeared on BBC Desert Island Discs on 6 February 2022.

Research

Spiegelhalter's research interests are in statistics including *

Bayesian Thomas Bayes (/beɪz/; c. 1701 – 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister. Bayesian () refers either to a range of concepts and approaches that relate to statistical methods based on Bayes' theorem, or a followe ...

approach to clinical trials, expert systems and complex modelling and epidemiology. *

Graphical model A graphical model or probabilistic graphical model (PGM) or structured probabilistic model is a probabilistic model for which a graph expresses the conditional dependence structure between random variables. They are commonly used in probabili ...

s of conditional independence. He wrote several papers in the 1980s that showed how probability could be incorporated into expert systems, a problem that seemed intractable at the time. Spiegelhalter showed that while

frequentist Frequentist inference is a type of statistical inference based in frequentist probability, which treats “probability” in equivalent terms to “frequency” and draws conclusions from sample-data by means of emphasizing the frequency or pro ...

probability did not lend itself to expert systems,

Bayesian probability Bayesian probability is an interpretation of the concept of probability, in which, instead of frequency or propensity of some phenomenon, probability is interpreted as reasonable expectation representing a state of knowledge or as quantification ...

most certainly did. *

Statistical software Statistical software are specialized computer programs for analysis in statistics and econometrics. Open-source * ADaMSoft – a generalized statistical software with data mining algorithms and methods for data management * ADMB – a softwar ...

. In the 1990s Spiegelhalter led the Medical Research Council team that developed WinBUGS ("Bayesian analysis Using Gibbs Sampling"), a statistical-modelling system allowing

hierarchical A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...

prior distribution In Bayesian statistical inference, a prior probability distribution, often simply called the prior, of an uncertain quantity is the probability distribution that would express one's beliefs about this quantity before some evidence is taken into ...

s. WinBUGS and its successor

OpenBUGS OpenBUGS is a software application for the Bayesian analysis of complex statistical models using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. OpenBUGS is the open source variant of WinBUGS ( Bayesian inference Using Gibbs Sampling). It runs under ...

specifies

graphical model A graphical model or probabilistic graphical model (PGM) or structured probabilistic model is a probabilistic model for which a graph expresses the conditional dependence structure between random variables. They are commonly used in probabili ...

s using acyclic directed graphs whose nodes are random variables, which are updated using

Gibbs sampling In statistics, Gibbs sampling or a Gibbs sampler is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for obtaining a sequence of observations which are approximated from a specified multivariate probability distribution, when direct sampling is diff ...

(an updating method for

Markov chain Monte Carlo In statistics, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods comprise a class of algorithms for sampling from a probability distribution. By constructing a Markov chain that has the desired distribution as its equilibrium distribution, one can obtain ...

(MCMC)

simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of Conceptual model, models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or proc ...

). Earlier Bayesian software had required that the probability distribution for the observed data be an

exponential family In probability and statistics, an exponential family is a parametric set of probability distributions of a certain form, specified below. This special form is chosen for mathematical convenience, including the enabling of the user to calculate ...

and that the prior be its conjugate distribution. Allowing flexible choices of prior distributions simplified hierarchical modelling and helped to promote

multilevel model Multilevel models (also known as hierarchical linear models, linear mixed-effect model, mixed models, nested data models, random coefficient, random-effects models, random parameter models, or split-plot designs) are statistical models of parame ...

s, which became widely used in epidemiology and education. *General issues in

clinical trials Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, dieta ...

, including cluster randomisation, meta-analysis and ethical monitoring. *Monitoring and comparing clinical and public-health outcomes and their associated publication as performance indicators. *Public understanding of risk, including promoting concepts such as the

micromort A micromort (from micro- and mortality) is a unit of risk defined as a one-in-a-million chance of death. Micromorts can be used to measure the riskiness of various day-to-day activities. A microprobability is a one-in-a million chance of some e ...

(a one in a million chance of death) and

microlife A microlife is a unit of risk representing half an hour change of life expectancy. Discussed by David Spiegelhalter and Alejandro Leiva, and also used by Lin et al. for decision analysis, microlives are intended as a simple way of communicating ...

(a 30-minute reduction of life expectancy). Media reporting of statistics, risk and probability and the wider conception of uncertainty as going beyond what is measured to model uncertainty, the unknown and the unmeasurable.

Honours

*1975 Fellow,

*1985

Guy Medal The Guy Medals are awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in three categories; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The Silver and Bronze medals are awarded annually. The Gold Medal was awarded every three years between 1987 and 2011, but is awarded biennia ...

in Bronze, Royal Statistical Society *1990 Award for Outstanding Statistical Application,

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...

*1993 Chartered Statistician, Royal Statistical Society *1994 Guy Medal in Silver, Royal Statistical Society *1994 Honorary Doctorate,

Aalborg University Aalborg University (AAU) is a Danish public university with campuses in Aalborg, Esbjerg, and Copenhagen founded in 1974. The university awards bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and PhD degrees in a wide variety of subjects within humanitie ...

, Denmark * 2005 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) *2006 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 ...

(OBE) in the

Queen's Birthday Honours The Birthday Honours, in some Commonwealth realms, mark the King's Official Birthday, reigning British monarch's official birthday by granting various individuals appointment into Order (honour), national or Dynastic order of knighthood, dynastic ...

for services to medical research *2006 Appointed Honorary Professor of Biostatistics at

*2009 Weldon Memorial Prize and Medal *2010 Honorary Doctorate of Science,

Plymouth University The University of Plymouth is a public research university based predominantly in Plymouth, England, where the main campus is located, but the university has campuses and affiliated colleges across South West England. With students, it is th ...

*2013 Honorary Doctorate from

Heriot-Watt University Heriot-Watt University ( gd, Oilthigh Heriot-Watt) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was established in 1821 as the School of Arts of Edinburgh, the world's first mechanics' institute, and subsequently granted univ ...

*2014

Knighted A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the G ...

in the

2014 Birthday Honours The 2014 Birthday Honours were appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as part of ...

for services to statistics * 2020

in Gold, Royal Statistical Society *2020

Michael Faraday Prize The Royal Society of London Michael Faraday Prize is awarded for "excellence in communicating science to UK audiences". Named after Michael Faraday, the medal itself is made of silver gilt, and is accompanied by a purse of £2500. Background ...

of the Royal Society

Media appearances

* ''

Horizon The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...

– To Infinity and Beyond'' (10 February 2010) *
The Joy of Stats
' (7 December 2010) *''

– What is One Degree?'' (10 January 2011) – Interviewed by

Ben Miller Bennet Evan Miller (born 24 February 1966) is an English actor, comedian, and author. He rose to fame as one half of the comedy duo Armstrong and Miller. Miller is also known for playing the lead role of DI Richard Poole in the first two serie ...

*'' Winter Wipeout -'' ''BBC One'' (17 December 2011) *
Tails You Win: The Science of Chance
' (18 October 2012) *''

– Should I Eat Meat? The Big Health Dilemma'' (18 August 2014) *'' Through the Wormhole with

Morgan Freeman Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, director, and narrator. He is known for his distinctive deep voice and various roles in a wide variety of film genres. Throughout his career spanning over five decades, he has received ...

(2014) *
Climate Change by Numbers
' (2 March 2015) * ''

Panorama A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined i ...

– Why Are Gambling Machines Addictive?'' (12 September 2016) *
The 80,000 Hours Podcast
' – (21 June – 2017) *
Social Science Bites
' – (2 April 2018) *
The Infinite Monkey Cage: 100th Episode TV Special
' – (13 July 2018) * ''Risky Talk''; host o
Risky Talk
the podcast (5 February 2020 – ongoing)
''Scientists in the Spotlight''
with Jim Al-Khalili. BBC Sounds (15 Dec 2020)
Desert Island Discs
BBC Radio 4 (11 February 2022)

Bibliography

* ''Sex by Numbers: What Statistics Can Tell Us About Sexual Behaviour'' (2015, Wellcome Collection) * ''The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data'' (2019, Pelican) * ''Covid by Numbers: Making Sense of the Pandemic with Data'' (2021, Pelican) (with Dr Anthony Masters)

References

External links

Homepage at Statistical Laboratory, Cambridge
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spiegelhalter, David 1953 births Living people English statisticians Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge Alumni of Keble College, Oxford Alumni of University College London Officers of the Order of the British Empire 20th-century English mathematicians 21st-century English mathematicians Cambridge mathematicians English people of German descent Knights Bachelor People educated at Barnstaple Grammar School Professors of the University of Cambridge