Archive for Florence Nightingale

dough Nat’ [1 Oct 2025]

Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on November 1, 2025 by xi'an

The 01 October²⁵ issue of Nature contains a paper on a “doughnut-shaped representation of social and planetary boundaries towards meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet”. With the side description including a warning

“Red wedges show a shortfall below the social foundation or an overshoot beyond the ecological ceiling. The grey wedge indicates missing data. The centre of the plot represents total human deprivation (for the social indicators) and the pre-industrial Holocene baseline (for the ecological indicators). Values are proportional to the length of each wedge, which leads to a quadratic scaling of wedge area that may lead some readers to perceive small changes as more significant than they are.”

which compounds the shortcomings of the original if unmentioned Nightingale rose, as pointed out by Edward Tufte and (CHANCE colleague) Howard Wainer. (And add insult to injury by switching from a rose to the worst ever junk food!) Quiz time: how many dimensions are crammed into the proposed representation? And do they exceed the number of unhealthy ingredients in a doughnut?!

parallels of statistical graphics and comics

Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2025 by xi'an


Andrew Gelman (whose appreciation of comics is well-known, at least in my circles!) and Susan Kruglinski, doctoral student at The University of Texas at Austin, wrote a fantastic piece on the parallels between statistical graphics and cartoons and comic strips, which recently got published in a magazine, the appropriately named Nightingale, published by the Data Visualization Society. In particular, they manage to associate most convincingly iconic statistical graphics, like the one above produced by Galton to illustrate his novel concept of correlation, with visually close caricatures and cartoons, like this depiction of Napoléon as a spider at the centre of a web, with flies caught there, representing puppet states or about to fall under French influence, with the exception of the British fly…

Amy in Randomland [book review]

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 15, 2022 by xi'an

Amy’s Luck is a short book by David Hand that I recently received for review in CHANCE. David, whom I have known for quite a while now, is professor at Imperial College London. This is not his first book, by far! But this may be the most unusual one, if not the shortest. Written as a pastiche of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it tells of the adventures of a young girl named Amy in the pursuit of luck or at least of its meaning. It has about the same number of chapters as Carroll’s book and could easily be read on a leisurely boat trip from Oxford to Godstow. While non-sensical and playing on the imprecision of the English language, its probabilist is both correct and rational. References to the original Alice abound and I presumably missed a fair portion of them, having read Alice (in French) decades ago. The book also contains illustrations from the author, gathered into a charm bracelet printed on the cover and a most helpful appendix where David points out the real world stories behind those of Amy, which is also full of gems, like Kolmogorov being a train conductor in his youth. (Missing an addition about Galton’s quincunx, esp. when his cousin Darwin is more than mentioned.) Or Asimov creating the milihelen to measure how much beauty was required to launch a ship. Overall, it is quite charming and definitely enjoyable, if presumably not accessible by the same audience as Alice‘s. And unlikely to take over Alice‘s! But from “She could understand the idea that coins had heads”, to a Nightingale rose renamed after Miss Starling, to the permutation of Brown, Stein, and Bachelier into Braun, Stone, and a bachelor, David must have had fun writing it. As others will while reading it and trying to separate probabilistic sense from non-sense.

[Disclaimer about potential self-plagiarism: this post or an edited version will eventually appear in my Book Review section in CHANCE.]

Sousaphonic graph!

Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , on January 17, 2022 by xi'an

Florence Nightingale Bicentennial Fellowship and Tutor in Statistics and Probability in Oxford [call]

Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , on July 29, 2019 by xi'an

Reposted: The Department of Statistics is recruiting a Florence Nightingale Bicentennial Fellowship and Tutor in Statistics and Probability with effect from October 2019 or as soon as possible thereafter. The post holder will join the dynamic and collaborative Department of Statistics. The Department carries out world-leading research in applied statistics fields including statistical and population genetics and bioinformatics, as well as core theoretical statistics, computational statistics, machine learning and probability. This is an exciting time for the Department, which relocated to new premises on St Giles’ in the heart of the University of Oxford in 2015. Our newly-renovated building provides state-of-the-art teaching facilities and modern space to facilitate collaboration and integration, creating a highly visible centre for Statistics in Oxford. The successful candidate will hold a doctorate in the field of Statistics, Mathematics or a related subject. They will be an outstanding individual who has the potential to become a leader in their field. The post holder will have the skills and enthusiasm to teach at undergraduate and graduate level, within the Department of Statistics, and to supervise student projects. They will carry out and publish original research within their area of specialisation. We particularly encourage candidates working in areas that link with existing research groups in the department to apply. The deadline for application is September 30, 2019.

If you would like to discuss this post and find out more about joining the academic community in Oxford, please contact Professor Judith Rousseau or Professor Yee Whye Teh. All enquiries will be treated in strict confidence and will not form part of the selection decision.