Statistics are essential, from helping us to make choices in our day to day lives to predicting what might happen in the future, but often they are boring and can be manipulated to serve a particular purpose.

A special debate tonight with Professor David Spiegelhalter and Bad Science’s Dr Ben Goldacre (pictured) will ask if we can sex statistics up without dumbing them down and discuss how we can learn from past mistakes made with statistics.

Looking ahead to his talk, Professor Speigelhalter says: “Statistics can be boring things laid out in tables to four decimal places. But by taking them, shaking them and making them into pictures and animations, we can try and bring them to life and show that they can tell a story. Not just a single story of what has happened to one person, but a narrative that really reflects the complexity of life, including our uncertainty about what is going on and what might happen in the future.

“I will show some of the ways people are creating images from statistics, and demonstrate some tools to help you understand the uncertainties about how long you might live and what the benefits of medical treatment might be. I will also show why lie detectors should not be believed.”

In his weekly column ‘Bad Science’ for the Guardian Ben Goldacre regularly takes on the worst offenders of bad statistics and science. Using satirical criticism of scientific inaccuracy, health scares and pseudoscience, he asks for the evidence and statistics behind wild claims and shows what the stats really mean.

Professor Spiegelhalter is the Winton Professor of the Public Understaning of Risk at the University of Cambridge. His website, Understanding Uncertainty, features the use of probability and statistics in everyday life, and makes extensive use of animations to tell the story.

‘Statistics are either dull or wrong: discuss’ takes place from 7.30pm at the Babbage Lecture Theatre on the New Museums Site. It is a Spotlight on Science lecture of the Cambridge Science Festival.
 

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