Chance, luck, and ignorance: how to put our uncertainty into numbers - David Spiegelhalter

We all have to live with uncertainty. We attribute good and bad events as ‘due to chance’, label people as ‘lucky’, and (sometimes) admit our ignorance. In this Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture David shows how to use the theory of probability to take apart all these ideas, and demonstrate how you can put numbers on your ignorance, and then measure how good those numbers are. David Spiegelhalter was Cambridge University's first Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk. He is the author of 'The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck' (Penguin, September 2024). David would like to add: 'When I was asking the audience to compare birthdays and phone numbers with their neighbours, I am deeply embarrassed to admit that some of my sums were wrong. In an audience of 200, I incorrectly claimed there were around 400 pairs, whereas of course it is only around 200. So I was very lucky to get so many matches."