Ihaka Lecture Series 2018 – collected here for your viewing pleasure

The second annual edition of the Ihaka Lecture Series has just ended, and we are, once again, delighted with the turnout and engagement, in person and online. Our final speaker was Alberto Cairo, right, Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami, whose lecture on the dubious uses of data was thought-provoking and a bit worrying.

If you want to see how Trump supporters deluded themselves and misled others with graphics, it’s all laid bare here in Alberto’s lecture. And that this brand of Trumpery is not the only example of statistics willfully used to mislead – Alberto delivers a few other eye-openers. And some laughs, as well – he is a very entertaining and engaging speaker. By the way, it’s not all bad news – there is much useful and thoughtful work being done, and Alberto shows what that is and where.

Alberto’s lecture is accessible to all. He uses non-technical language, as and Alberto says, he’s not a statistician. So if you are teaching secondary-school statistics (or citizenship or social studies … ) this would be a really good resource for your students.

Also, Alberto was yesterday interviewed by Colin Peacock, the long-time host of Radio New Zealand’s Mediawatch, and it’s recommended listening. The pic Mediawatch ran of Alberto on its webpage was so nice, we stole it. Nice image, RNZ’s Claire Eastham-Farrelly!

Of course, we also had two other incomparable speakers: our own Associate Professor Paul Murrell, one of the movers and shakers behind R, on the BrailleR package, which generates text descriptions of R plots (watch here) and Monash Professor Dianne Cook, who described some simple tools for helping to decide if patterns you think you are seeing in the data are really there (watch here).

And … in breaking news, the theme of next year’s Ihaka Lecture Series is … machine learning! Speakers will be announced at a later date.

+ Useful link: The 2017 Ihaka Lecture Series.