Foundations & Frontiers

The ideas behind the impact: the concepts, tools and methods that make data science possible. In this section: DataScienceBites | Interviews

Our Foundations & Frontiers content is in development. Interested in contributing to Real World Data Science? Check out our call for contributions.

An image of the cover of the RSS Data Science and Artificial Intelligence

RSS: Data Science and Artificial Intelligence - showcase your research
AI
Data Science
Machine learning
Deep learning
Econometrics

RSS: Data Science and Artificial Intelligence is now open to submissions. It offers an exciting venue for your work in these disciplines with a broad reach across…

Feb 5, 2025

Close-up of a copy of the Nobel Prize Medal. Photographed on the floor of the Nobel Museum in Old Town, Stockholm. Machine learning came up a winner in both the Physics and Chemistry Nobel Prizes for 2024. Credit Shutterstock.

The machine learning victories at the 2024 Nobel Prize Awards and how to explain them
AI
Algorithms
Machine Learning

Machine learning using apparently different architectures bagged the 2024 Nobel Prizes for Physics and Chemistry. Anna Demming reports on what the prizes were awarded for…

Anna Demming
Oct 31, 2024

Muted. In the absence of proactive intervention, the shift of debate and discourse online risks muting women and girls as multiple factors exclude them from engaging there as productively as male counterparts. Copyright Park Kang Hun/Shutterstock.

Are we at risk of muting the female voice in the digital world?
gender equality
skills
ethics

Anna Demming reports on recent insights into the interplay between gender disparities on and offline and what might help to close the gap.

Anna Demming
Sep 17, 2024

Growth of GDP with statistical graph, 3d rendering. Digital drawing. Credit: Shutterstock, Vink Fan

Nowcasting upgrade for better real time estimation of GDP and inflation
Forecasting
Machine learning

Atmajitsinh Gohil describes a recently devised 3 step framework that improves the accuracy of nowcasting.

Atmajitsinh Gohil
Jun 25, 2024

Themis, goddess of justice. External governance is required to ensure the outcomes of AI deployment are safe and just. Credit Shutterstock, Michal Bednarek

AI series: Ensuring new AI technologies help everyone thrive
AI
AI ethics
Regulation

This AI article series has highlighted a number of areas where AI can offer genuine benefits, as well as flagging how best to dodge the pitfalls and cultivate models and…

Anna Demming
Jun 11, 2024

The panel clockwise from top left: Ali Al-Sherbaz, Janet Bastiman, Fatemeh Torabi and Jonathan Gillard

AI series: What is “best practice” when working with AI in the real world?
AI
large language models
machine learning

Working with AI in real world conditions can be quite a different proposal to the idealised settings often discussed “in theory”. Guest editor Anna Demming speaks to a panel…

Anna Demming
Jun 4, 2024

The Industry of Ideas Infrastructure (provided by Jason Owen-Smith, IRIS, University of Michigan)

AI series: Meeting the unprecedented challenges AI poses in the labour market
AI
Data management
Forecasting

Expanding the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across various sectors has been widely touted as a significant threat to jobs but so far data to justify these fears…

Julia Lane, Lesley Hirsch, and Adam Leonard
May 28, 2024

Evaluation plots. The kinds of charts of monitored performance and risk metrics that are plotted to evaluate an AI model. Reliable deployment of an algorithm requires identifying appropriate metrics for performance and risk as well as rigorous, ongoing evaluation. Image created by Isabel Sassoon using Adobe Firefly to show a technical report process flow of statistical model performance and a huge numbers chart.

AI series: Evaluation essentials for safe and reliable AI model performance
AI
Machine Learning
Large Language Models

The real world can be a dangerous place for an AI algorithm, full of unforeseen data, evolving behaviours and significant human consequences. Isabel Sassoon highlights some…

Isabel Sassoon
May 21, 2024

Eleanor Roosevelt reads the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949; FDR Presidential Library & Museum 64-165

AI series: On AI ethics - influencing its use in the delivery of public good
AI
AI ethics

While AI algorithms can pose a number of challenges in terms of the size and sophistication of the algorithms, ethical issues can be the hardest and most important aspect to…

Olivia Varley-Winter
May 14, 2024

Stages involved in AI model development

AI series: Healthy datasets for optimised AI performance
AI
Data management
Data science education

Even “correct” data can cause all manner of mischief when fed indiscriminately into AI training and test data sets. Here the various issues that can arise and possible…

Fatemeh Torabi, Lewis Hotchkiss, Emma Squires, Prof. Simon E. Thompson and Prof. Ronan A. Lyons
May 7, 2024

A watercolour illustration in two strong colours showing the silhouettes of four people, two of whom have dogs on leads. They all cast shadows, and vary between realistic representations and those formed by representations of algorithms, data points or networks.

AI series: Generative AI models and the quest for human-level artificial intelligence
AI
Large language models
Machine learning
Deep neural networks

Diego Miranda-Saavedra explores some of the merits and limitations of modern machine learning models, and considers where these ‘intelligent’ systems might sit in the…

Diego Miranda-Saavedra
Apr 29, 2024

A schematic of a neural network depicted with circles connected with lines or arrows.

AI series: What is AI? Shedding light on the method and madness in these algorithms
AI
algorithms
statistics

AI has become a hot topic of debate but these discussions can circulate fears and fantasies more than a meaningful analysis of real world data. In this special issue we…

Anna Demming
Apr 22, 2024

Photo of Julia Lane, professor at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and visiting fellow at RTI International.

Democratizing Data: Using natural language processing and machine learning to capture dataset usage
AI
Data
Machine learning
Natural language processing

Real World Data Science speaks with Julia Lane, professor at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and visiting fellow at RTI International, about an initiative…

Brian Tarran
Mar 11, 2024

Two bubbles overlapping on a black background.

What is data science? A closer look at science’s latest priority dispute
Algorithms
Data science education
Skills
Training

Two popular data science algorithms – naïve Bayes and eigen centrality – are used to examine the difference between data scientists, statisticians, and other occupations.

Jonathan Auerbach, David Kepplinger, and Nicholas Rios
Feb 19, 2024

Official photograph of US Census Bureau director Robert Santos, with US flag in background.

‘We absolutely have to transform and modernise our operation’ – US Census Bureau director Robert Santos
Data
Data privacy
Data literacy
Education
Public engagement
AI

Edited highlights from an interview conducted last summer with US Census Bureau director Robert Santos and colleagues, touching on pandemic challenges, the growing use of…

Brian Tarran (with Anna Britten)
Jan 15, 2024

Photo of national statistician Professor Sir Ian Diamond, standing, with microphone, during a talk.

‘I was pretty clear in my mind that we were into a no-going-back situation’
Data
People
Innovation
Data literacy
Public engagement

Real World Data Science interviews UK national statistician Professor Sir Ian Diamond about culture change and innovation in the national statistical system post-Covid…

Brian Tarran
Dec 15, 2023

Portrait photo of Andrea Saltelli, co-editor of 'The Politics of Modelling.'

‘I would like modellers to be less ambitious in developing monster models that are impossible to inspect’
Modelling
Public policy

Real World Data Science interviews Andrea Saltelli, co-editor of ‘The Politics of Modelling,’ about pandemic models, trust in science, and why we must seek to uncover the…

Brian Tarran
Nov 24, 2023

Open lock and key. Photo by Basil James on Unsplash.

How to ‘open science’: A brief guide to principles and practices
Open science
Open source
Open data
Reproducible research

As a university lecturer, Isabel Sassoon made frequent use of open data resources for teaching and research. But it was only recently that she fully learned to embrace and…

Isabel Sassoon
Nov 6, 2023

Portrait photo of Andrew Garrett, president of the Royal Statistical Society.

‘Statistics and data science are at the heart of the AI movement – we want to be a strong voice in the debate’
AI
Events
Algorithms
Risk

Royal Statistical Society president Andrew Garrett talks AI model evaluation and risk, and why training data and model inputs deserve greater attention in discussions over…

Brian Tarran
Oct 25, 2023

Photo of Helen Miller-Bakewell.

‘Feelings about sharing data can be context and time dependent – you can’t just do one survey or focus group’
Data sharing
Data linkage
Public engagement

Real World Data Science sits down with Helen Miller-Bakewell of the UK Office for Statistics Regulation to talk data sharing and linkage in government – progress made…

Brian Tarran
Oct 16, 2023

R-Girls logo layered on top of a classroom scene, rendered in bright pastel colours, created by Bing Image Creator.

‘What if we try to bring R to the classroom? That was our wacky idea’
R
Education
Outreach

R-Girls is a new project aiming to introduce R into secondary school lessons – just not through computer science classes! Real World Data Science meets with one of the…

Brian Tarran
Sep 25, 2023

Portrait photo of Alberto Cairo by JCA Photography

The many ‘dialects’ of data visualization: Alberto Cairo and ‘The Art of Insight’
Data visualisation
Communication

In his upcoming new book, journalist and designer Alberto Cairo explores the idea of ‘data visualization as language’, one with many different dialects – statistical…

Brian Tarran
Aug 1, 2023

DataScienceBites logo overlaid on a busy conference scene.

Heading to a conference this summer? Share your learnings here
Content ideas
Call for contributions
Events

Calling all summer conference delegates! If you’re heading to one of this year’s big statistics and data science events, consider writing about your favourite paper or…

Brian Tarran
Jul 17, 2023

New York road signs pointing left and right, both reading 'One Way'.

Choosing the right forecast
Forecasting
Prediction
Robustness

Practitioners often select forecast methods based on averages of scores from many probabilistic forecasts. But this is not without its difficulties. A recent paper by Bolin…

Brian King
Jul 13, 2023

Nine small images with schematic representations of differently shaped neural networks, a human hand making a different gesture is placed behind each network.

Trusted AI: translating AI ethics from theory into practice
AI ethics
Principles
Regulation

Data scientists can act as critical enablers of ethical AI when they have the right knowledge and toolkits at their disposal. Maxine Setiawan and Mira Pijselman review three…

Maxine Setiawan and Mira Pijselman
Jul 3, 2023

Photo of London at night, with Big Ben clock tower towering over the city. Photo by Arthur Yao on Unsplash.

London Data Week is almost here. What’s it all about?
Data
Innovation
Events
Communities

The first ever London Data Week runs from 3–9 July 2023. Real World Data Science meets with organisers Sam Nutt and Jennifer Ding to hear about their vision and plans for…

Brian Tarran
Jun 8, 2023

Photo of Stephanie Hare by Mitzi de Margary. Photo supplied by Stephanie Hare, used with permission.

‘I’m way more into prevention than cure’: Stephanie Hare on why we need a culture of technology ethics
Technology ethics
AI ethics
Culture
Regulation

Stephanie Hare, author of ‘Technology is Not Neutral’, talks to Real World Data Science about the ‘wicked problem’ of technology and AI ethics, and why laws and regulations…

Brian Tarran
Apr 28, 2023

Bikers in front of the United States Capitol in Washington DC. Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash.

US legislators get their data science act together
Data science education
Data literacy
Policy

A bill introduced in the US Congress wants to make funds available to develop data science and data literacy education across the United States. We sit down with education…

Brian Tarran
Mar 6, 2023

A shopping trolley being pushed around a supermarket. Photo by Marjan Blan | @marjanblan on Unsplash.

Using ‘basket complementarity’ to make product recommendations
Market basket analysis
Recommendation systems
Complementarity

Purchase suggestions – e.g., “if you are buying that, you might also want this” – are, to a large extent, informed by the concept of complementarity: that certain products…

Moinak Bhaduri
Mar 2, 2023

Photo of Heidi Seibold

Why open science is ‘just good science in a digital era’
Open science
Reproducible research

Real World Data Science speaks with statistician and data scientist Heidi Seibold about open science: what it means, the benefits of it, and how to move towards it.

Brian Tarran
Feb 3, 2023

Photo of Erica Thompson

How to ‘Escape from Model Land’: an interview with Erica Thompson
Modelling
Ethics

Author Erica Thompson talks to Real World Data Science about the ‘social element’ of mathematical modelling, how it manifests, and what to do about it.

Brian Tarran
Jan 25, 2023

A researcher in a field shines a light on stylised waves of noise, as if attempting to identify or extract a signal. Image generated by DALL.E 2 from prompts provided by Real World Data Science.

Pulling patterns out of data with a graph
Data management
Dimension reduction
Graph theory

Large volumes of data are pouring in every day from scientific experiments, so much so that it is now commonplace to perform dimension reduction in order to reduce a large…

Andrew Saydjari
Jan 24, 2023

Photo taken from the backseat of a Lyft vehicle. Driver is seen in profile to the left of the picture. Phone is mounted on the dash and displays a maps app that is tracking the route to the passenger's destination. Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash.

Determining the best way to route drivers for ridesharing via reinforcement learning
A/B testing
Reinforcement learning
Statistics

A/B testing is often used to evaluate the impact of design ‘treatments’ — for example, are people who see advert A more likely to buy something than those who see advert B?…

Brian King
Dec 13, 2022
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