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Professor Hannah Fry, mathematician, best-selling author, award-winning science presenter and host of popular podcasts and television shows, will join the ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ as the first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics on 1 January.

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in 2020, the R rate became well-known shorthand for the reproduction of the disease. Yet a new study suggests it’s time for ‘a farewell to R’ in favour of a different approach based on the growth rate of infection rather than contagiousness.

Researchers have developed a real-time approach that can help prevent incidents like the large-scale disruption at London’s Gatwick Airport in 2018, where possible drone sightings at the perimeter of the airport caused the cancellation of hundreds of flights.

Who made more accurate predictions about the course of the COVID-19 pandemic – experts or the public? A study from the ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ has found that experts such as epidemiologists and statisticians made far more accurate predictions than the public, but both groups substantially underestimated the true extent of the pandemic.

Five researchers at the ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ have won consolidator grants from the European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s premiere funding organisation for frontier research.

Calculations now familiar from coronavirus coverage – cases per 100,000 people – applied to ethnicity and homicide victimisation in the UK for the first time. 

A series of experiments – including one on the BBC News website – finds the use of numerical ranges in news reports helps us grasp the uncertainty of stats while maintaining trust in data and its sources. 

From climate change and extending the human lifespan to political extremism and reporting from war zones, this year’s Darwin College Lecture Series will focus on some of the extremes faced by society. 

Transparency without accessibility is not enough: stats must be put in context, say researchers. 

New ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ ‘crime harm index’ published today quantifies true cost of crime: damage caused to victims and society. Experts call on UK government to adopt low-cost metric for greater transparency of crime trends and risks. Some UK forces have already used approach with early successes in identifying ‘harm spots’.