In a previous post I referenced a book by the eminent statistician David Spiegelhalter. Since earlier this year, Davis has also been producing a podcast ‘Risky Talk‘ on the relevance of Statistics for various issues of public interest. The latest of these is titled ‘Coronavirus: Understanding the Numbers’ and is full of useful information and discussion. It includes, among other things, a discussion of:
- Which data are most reliable for understanding the epidemic;
- How the different approaches to the epidemic adopted in Norway and Sweden provide a live experiment for assessing the impact of social controls;
- A comparison of the seriousness of COVID-19 relative to other flu-like illnesses in the UK;
- A discussion of the personal risk we all carry of dying from COVID-19 and other causes.
It’s a great listen and there’s probably nobody qualified to be explaining these issues
