On Thursday, 16th May, academics celebrated the publication of journalist Tom Chivers’ book, Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World.
Tom Chivers is a bestselling science writer who in 2020, was named the Association of British Science Writers’ science writer of the year. He has won two “statistical excellence in journalism” awards from the Royal Statistical Society, and his first book, The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy, was named a Times book of the year in 2019.
Tom’s book explores the practice and impact of Bayes’ Theorem, a mathematical theorem developed by eighteenth-century minister, Thomas Bayes.
His theorem looks at conditional probability of test results in light of related events, which is especially useful when understanding false positives, where the theorem offers a likelihood of a certain outcome.
(Bayes’ mathematical theorem)
The theorem is still used today and in honour of Thomas Bayes’ contributions to the field of mathematics, the business school renamed itself Bayes Business School in 2021.
In his opening remarks, Professor André Spicer asked: “So what can we learn about today’s world problems from an eighteenth-century minister and amateur mathematician? How could Bayes traverse the lines of religion and mathematics to bring us a theorem on inverse probability?”
“This theorem helps us understand why accurate health screening tests can lead to false positives, why scientific results can still be wrong despite being ‘statistically significant’, and why conspiracy theories are hard to change. Is artificial intelligence really just the application of Bayesian principles? Why are our brains vulnerable to optical illusions? Tom’s book explores how these principles are used in forecasting that can outperform today’s analysts. In short, Bayes’ theorem can help us explain the world.”
Tom discussed the book with Markus Gesmann, co-founder, Insurance Capital Market Research and Honorary Visiting Fellow at Bayes Business School.
This was followed by a panel discussion with Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS OBE, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the Centre for Mathematical Science, University of Cambridge; and Mel Zhang, Head of Algorithmic Pricing at Ki.
Markus commented:
“The beauty of Bayesian modelling is that it allows you to incorporate all the relevant information you have, whether it comes from data or from your prior expert knowledge.”
Tom added:
“There are few things more intimidating than talking about Bayesian statistics to a roomful of Bayesian statisticians in a building literally named after Bayes, but it was a lot of fun.”
Tom’s book is an Amazon bestseller in mathematical modelling.
