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A panoramic view of Real World Data Science

A doctor takes a blood pressure reading from a patient.

Forecasting the Health Needs of a Changing Population
Health and Wellbeing
Forecasting
Taking NHS usage of the 1 million people in and around Bristol, then combining with population forecasts into a modelling framework has created a sophisticated but…
Luke Shaw (BNSSG ICB), Rich Wood (BNSSG ICB, University of Bath), Christos Vasilakis (University of Bath), Zehra Onen Dumlu (University of Bath)
Aug 1, 2024

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

New open access journal - RSS: Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
AI
Data Science
Machine learning
Deep learning
Econometrics
The Royal Statistical Society is launching its new fully open access journal, RSS: Data Science and Artificial Intelligence with a remit to publish research on statistics…
Aug 1, 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

Screengrab of video showing Jonathan Gillard and Penny Holborn in conversation.

Data science and AI in the public sector: An interview with ONS’s Penny Holborn
AI
Data
Skills
Public sector
Penny Holborn, head of faculty for the Office for National Statistics Data Science Campus, talks to Jonathan Gillard about keeping up with new developments, the value of…
Jonathan Gillard
Mar 27, 2024

Screengrab of video interview showing Matthew Jones on the left and Jonathan Gillard on the right. Screengrab is overlaid on a laptop background.

Data science and AI in financial services: An interview with Nationwide’s Matthew Jones
AI
Communication
Skills
Financial services
Matthew Jones, head of decision science and analytical innovation at building society Nationwide, talks career path, data science tools and skills, and the role of AI in…
Jonathan Gillard
Mar 21, 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

Photo of Thank You sign against a backdrop of a city at night.

Editor’s note: Not saying goodbye, just saying…
People
Updates
I’ll be leaving Real World Data Science and the Royal Statistical Society in a month’s time. Before I go, I want to say a big thank you to all the contributors, readers…
Brian Tarran
Mar 6, 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

Photo of the UK Houses of Parliament at dusk, taken from across the River Thames.

£10m for UK regulators to ‘jumpstart’ AI capabilities, as government commits to white paper approach
AI
Large language models
Public policy
Risk
Regulation
It’s been a busy seven days for AI news in the UK as two major government reports were published, millions of pounds of new investments were announced, and warnings rang out…
Brian Tarran
Feb 8, 2024

Long exposure photo of the UK Houses of Parliament and Portcullis House, taken from across the River Thames.

UK government sets out 10 principles for use of generative AI
AI ethics
Large language models
Monitoring
Public policy
Risk

Government says staff need to understand what generative AI is, its limitations, and how to deploy the technology lawfully, ethically and securely.

Brian Tarran
Jan 22, 2024

Photo of Japanese cherry blossom, or sakura, against a blue background. Photo by AJ on Unsplash.

When will the cherry trees bloom? Get ready to make and share your predictions!
Coding
Prediction
Reproducible research
Statistics
The 2024 International Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition will open for entries on February 1. There’s cash and prizes on offer for the best entries, including having…
Brian Tarran
Jan 18, 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

Still from posit::conf(2023) talk, splitscreen view. On the left screen is Real World Data Science editor Brian Tarran presenting; on the right screen is a screengrab of the Quarto webpage, with the words GitHub Pages circled in red.

Creating a web publication with Quarto: the Real World Data Science origin story
Coding
Communication
Events
Communities
Open source
This is the story of how a Royal Statistical Society editor discovered an open source publishing system called Quarto, learned how to code (a bit), and built an online…
Brian Tarran
Jan 3, 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

Dark blue square with off-white rectangle at the bottom and small random white stars, and two white circles slightly off centre. Five black dots denote two eyes and three buttons on a snowman. Two brown lines look like arms. Two red rectangles form a hat. Orange triangle as a nose, with text reading Merry Christmas at the bottom.

Creating Christmas cards with R
R
Data visualisation
The programming language R is capable of creating a wide variety of geometric shapes that can be used to construct high quality graphics – including festive images. In this…
Nicola Rennie
Dec 12, 2023

Purple square with white snowflakes and green tree in foreground. Tree is decorated with red and gold baubles of various sizes.

A Christmas card in R for the Real World Data Science community
R
Data visualisation
Updates
Inspired by Nicola Rennie’s excellent tutorial on making Christmas cards with R, we’ve had a go at putting together our own design – especially for you, the wonderful…
Brian Tarran
Dec 12, 2023

Black computer screen showing a folder icon, with the numbers 2023 being typed out below.

AI and digital ethics in 2023: a ‘remarkable, eventful year’
AI
Large language models
Ethics
Regulation
Risk
At techUK’s Digital Ethics Summit, experts looked back on a year in which AI chatbots dominated debates, helped shape legislative agendas, and opened our eyes to the dangers…
Brian Tarran
Dec 8, 2023

An image of multiple 3D shapes representing speech bubbles in a sequence, with broken up fragments of text within them.

Evaluating artificial intelligence: How data science and statistics can make sense of AI models
AI
Large language models
Accountability
Regulation
Metrics
Events
How can we help organisations to deploy AI in a responsible way? Why have evaluation metrics trailed behind advances in AI technology? And, are data inputs receiving the…
Brian Tarran
Dec 6, 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

Photo of yellow chain links by Possessed Photography on Unsplash.

Deduplicating and linking large datasets using Splink
Crime and justice
Data quality
Data linkage

Robin Linacre introduces an open source tool, developed by the UK Ministry of Justice, which uses probabilistic record linkage to improve the quality of justice system data.

Robin Linacre
Nov 22, 2023

Computer monitor displaying bodycam recordings, primary colours, digital art. Created using Bing Image Creator.

Learning from failure: ‘Red flags’ in body-worn camera data
Crime and justice
Public policy
Data quality
Data analysis
Monitoring
When body-worn cameras were rolled out to juvenile correctional officers in Texas in 2018, senior leaders hoped proactive analysis of camera metadata could be used to…
Noah Wright
Nov 16, 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

Screengrab of RSS Conference panel members showing, left to right, Peter Wells, Maxine Setiawan, Sophie Carr, Chris Nemeth, and Karen Tingay.

How data science and statistics can shape the UK’s AI strategy
AI
Large language models
Events
At the Royal Statistical Society Conference this September, Real World Data Science brought together data scientists, statisticians, and policy experts to discuss the urgent…
Brian Tarran
Oct 30, 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

Wall stencilled with the phrase '# Leave no one behind'.

An AI for humanity
AI
Open source
Public funding is needed for an ‘AI for humanity’ project, modelled on the Human Genome Project, argues Martin Goodson. How else can we ensure the benefits of AI are spread…
Martin Goodson
Oct 20, 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

Halloween characters chatting over coffee at a professional conference focused on data science, digital art created by Bing Image Creator.

Join Real World Data Science at three events this October!
AI
Large language models
Communities
Events
Updates
An introduction to Real World Data Science as part of RSS Members’ Week; a keynote talk at the NHS-R Community Annual Conference; and a panel debate on AI evaluation…
Brian Tarran
Oct 10, 2023

Photo of Niclas Thomas.

‘I fell in love with math, really, and fell into data science because of that’
Leadership
Management
Communication
A passion for solving mathematical problems led Niclas Thomas to a PhD in machine learning and then a career in data science in the retail sphere. Now head of data science…
Brian Tarran
Oct 4, 2023

Two laptops connecting directly and becoming super charged, with a range of data visualisations in the background, comic book style. Created by Bing Image Creator.

American Statistical Association joins Real World Data Science as partner
News
Updates
Call for contributions
We’re thrilled to have ASA on board as a Real World Data Science partner and look forward to working with ASA members, groups and sections to further grow and develop the…
Brian Tarran
Oct 2, 2023

Chicago Theatre sign, illuminated at night.

Live from Chicago: Real World Data Science at posit::conf(2023)
Conferences
Events
This year’s posit::conf has come to a close, and we had a great time in Chicago learning about data science software, ideas, and applications. Read on for key takeaways from…
Brian Tarran
Sep 27, 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

A collection of data, viewed through a distorted lens, digital art, created by Bing Image Creator.

‘Pseudo data science’ and other pitfalls: lessons from the UK’s stats regulator on how not to be misleading
Communication
Leadership
Transparency
In organisations, data scientists are not the only players who get to influence how data and data science are presented and used – so they need to be on their guard for…
Ed Humpherson
Sep 18, 2023

A small figurine of an oktokata in the center, in the background a laptop with an open code editor and a terminal.

Contributors: check out the new Real World Data Science template repo on GitHub
Call for contributions
Tools
Updates
The ‘RWDS_post_template’ repository, created by Finn-Ole Höner, demonstrates various Quarto features and helps site contributors to create content using our house style and…
Brian Tarran
Sep 12, 2023

A photographic rendering of a young black man standing in front of a cloudy blue sky, seen through a refractive glass grid and overlaid with a diagram of a neural network.

For minorities, biased AI algorithms can damage almost every part of life
AI
AI ethics
Bias
Ethics
In his new book, ‘Is Artificial Intelligence Racist?’, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam explores the relationship between various forms of racism and sexism and artificial…
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
Sep 6, 2023

Exterior photo of the Harrogate Convention Centre.

RSS Conference preview: Evaluating AI, machine learning, and data visualisation
AI
Machine learning
Data visualisation
Events

Heading to RSS Conference in Harrogate this September? Here’s a selection of sessions to add to your schedule.

Brian Tarran
Aug 24, 2023

A shopper walks the aisles of a supermarket in the United States.

Food for Thought: Second place winners – DeepFFTLink
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing
PhD students and faculty from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Indiana University Bloomington describe their solution to the Food for Thought challenge: an ensemble of…
Yang Wu, Aishwarya Budhkar, Kai Zhang, Xuhong Zhang, and Xiaozhong Liu
Aug 21, 2023

A man is seen grocery shopping during the pandemic, looking at canned food while wearing a mask.

The Food for Thought Challenge: Using AI to support evidence-based food and nutrition policy
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing
Brian Tarran and Julia Lane introduce a collection of articles telling the story of the Food for Thought Challenge, which sought to use machine learning and natural language…
Brian Tarran and Julia Lane
Aug 21, 2023

Close up of shopping trolleys linked together.

Food for Thought: The value of competitions for confidential data
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing
The Food for Thought Challenge attracted new eyes from computer science and data science to think about how to address a critical real-world data linkage problem. And, in…
Steven Bedrick, Ophir Frieder, Julia Lane, and Philip Resnik
Aug 21, 2023

Section of article's Figure 1 graphic, illustrating the challenge of linking retail scanner data to nutrition information.

Food for Thought: Competition and challenge design
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

From structure to setup, to metrics, results, and lessons learned, Zheyuan Zhang and Uyen Le give an overview of the design of the Food for Thought competition.

Zheyuan Zhang and Uyen Le
Aug 21, 2023

Fresh vegetables on grocery store shelves.

Food for Thought: First place winners – Auburn Big Data
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

Auburn University’s team of PhD students and faculty describe their winning solution to the Food for Thought challenge: random forest classifiers.

Alex Knipper, Naman Bansal, Jingyi Zheng, Wenying Li, and Shubhra Kanti Karmaker
Aug 21, 2023

Dairy products lined up on refrigerator shelves in a farmers market in the United States.

Food for Thought: The importance of the Purchase to Plate Suite
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing
Andrea Carlson and Thea Palmer Zimmerman outline the policy issues driving the development of the Purchase to Plate Suite of data products and why linking retail scanner…
Andrea Carlson and Thea Palmer Zimmerman
Aug 21, 2023

An aerial shot of the groceries section of the Fred Meyer superstore in Redmond, WA.

Food for Thought: Third place winners – Loyola Marymount
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

Yifan Hu and Mandy Korpusik of Loyola Marymount University describe their solution to the Food for Thought challenge: binary classification with pre-trained BERT.

Yifan Hu and Mandy Korpusik
Aug 21, 2023

Photo shows people passing in front of Sega store in Japan, with Sega logo overhead. Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash.

Where do AI, data science, and computer games intersect?
Events
Video games
Education

Alice-Maria Toader and Liam Brierley report on two recent talks that explore the role of AI and data science in video game development.

Alice-Maria Toader and Liam Brierley
Aug 17, 2023

Google logo on top of building, against a blue sky.

Live from Toronto: Real World Data Science at the Joint Statistical Meetings
Conferences
Events
We’re in Toronto for this year’s Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM). Over the next few days, we’ll be sharing key takeaways from a selection of talks and sessions. Check back…
Brian Tarran
Aug 15, 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

A photo of children listening to teacher in class, taken from a child's perspective.

‘Go out and talk about data science, particularly to schoolchildren’
Education
Data literacy
Outreach
Open University professor Rachel Hilliam calls for data science outreach in schools, to build skills pipeline and plug gaps: ’There is absolutely no reason why we can’t…
Brian Tarran
Jul 27, 2023

Person sitting in front of a screen of code.

Testing out ChatGPT’s new Code Interpreter
AI
Large language models
Coding
Data analysis
OpenAI’s latest plugin turns ChatGPT into a tool for data cleaning, preprocessing, analysis, visualisation and predictive modelling tasks, among other things. Some have…
Lee Clewley
Jul 19, 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

An aerial view of London and the River Thames, taken from The Shard, London, United Kingdom.

Teaching a chatbot about love, and other adventures from London Data Week
AI
Open source
Accountability
Public opinion
Our editor shares his personal highlights from the first ever London Data Week, including an art exhibition about AI, a panel discussion on the benefits of open source, and…
Brian Tarran
Jul 7, 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 Claire Morton. Photo supplied by Claire Morton, used with permission.

‘I was inspired by the power that numerical data have to tell stories and promote policy change’
Education
Research
Policy
Mentoring
Statistical literacy
Claire Morton is an undergraduate student at Stanford University. In this Q&A, Claire explains how a high school job in a cell biology lab led to college studies in…
Brian Tarran
Jun 28, 2023

Photo of Albert Lee. Photo supplied by Albert Lee, used with permission.

‘Living my identity takes courage. It is the same courage necessary to start a new business’
Consulting
Leadership
Econometrics
Sampling
Machine learning
Albert Lee, the founding partner at Summit Consulting, describes his career journey – from mathematics and economics at university to the birth of data science and building…
Brian Tarran
Jun 28, 2023

Photo of Chanuki Seresinhe. Photo supplied by Chanuki Seresinhe, used with permission.

‘Once I started to see what was possible with data science, there was no going back’
Internet
Real estate
Leadership
Statistics
Stakeholder engagement
Chanuki Seresinhe is head of data science at Zoopla and Hometrack. This is her career story so far – from researching beautiful places to helping web users buy, sell and…
Brian Tarran
Jun 20, 2023

A young man sits in front of a computer keyboard, surrounded by monitors and books and with computer cables covering various surfaces.

The road to reproducible research: hazards to avoid and tools to get you there safely
Deep learning
Reproducibility
Coding
Collaboration
The road to reproducibility can be a tricky one to navigate, as Davit Svanidze discovered when he set about making his bachelor’s thesis reproducible. If you are thinking of…
Davit Svanidze, Andre Python, et al.
Jun 15, 2023

A young girl holds the hand of a robot on display at the Kuromon Market in Osaka. Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash.

How do people feel about AI? Well, it’s complicated
AI
Accountability
Regulation
Public opinion
A new survey from the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Alan Turing Institute finds broadly positive views towards AI use cases in healthcare and border security, among others…
Brian Tarran
Jun 13, 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

A photographic rendering of a smiling face emoji seen through a refractive glass grid, overlaid with a diagram of a neural network.

No, AI probably won’t kill us all – and there’s more to this fear campaign than meets the eye
AI
Large language models
Regulation
Last week, outlets around the world were plastered with news of yet another open letter claiming AI poses an existential threat to humankind. Michael Timothy Bennett argues…
Michael Timothy Bennett
Jun 5, 2023

Looking to distant landscape through binoculars, digital art. Image created by Bing Image Creator.

What’s the future of data science and AI in an LLM world?
Large language models
Skills
Tools
Ethics
People
Osama Rahman, director of the Data Science Campus at the UK Office for National Statistics, shared his thoughts on the past, present, and future of data science at an event…
Brian Tarran
May 26, 2023

Black and white portrait photo of Jasmine Holdsworth. Still from Real World Data Science video interview.

‘For me, data science is about bridging the gap between business requirements and the data that businesses have’
Data analysis
SQL
R
Bootcamps
Education
Jasmine Holdsworth ‘fell in love’ with data science while employed as a data analyst at Stack Overflow. Now working as a data scientist at Expedia Group, she explains how…
Brian Tarran
May 24, 2023

3D render of a conceptual visualisation of large language models by artist Tim West. Photo by Google DeepMind on Unsplash.

Large language models: Do we need to understand the maths, or simply recognise the limitations?
Large language models
AI
Communication
Regulation
Do we need to understand the inner workings of large language models before we use them? Or, is it enough to simply teach people to recognise that model outputs can’t always…
Brian Tarran
May 18, 2023

Photo of ChatGPT homescreen, by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash.

How is ChatGPT changing data science?
Large language models
AI
Skills
People
We sit down with the Royal Statistical Society’s Data Science and AI Section to hear how large language models are becoming part of the data science toolkit, and to consider…
Brian Tarran
May 11, 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

Black and white portrait photo of Sami Rahman. Photo supplied by Sami Rahman, used with permission.

‘I always thought someone like me couldn’t work in data, let alone data science’
Publishing
Data engineering
Data strategy
Machine learning
Sami Rahman, head of data engineering and data platform at Penguin Random House, parlayed a psychology degree into a data science career – inspired by a talk on machine…
Brian Tarran
Apr 24, 2023

A crowd of people talking, with speech bubbles representing the different voices, digital art. Image created by Real World Data Science using Microsoft Bing Image Creator.

The politics of performance measurement
Problem definition
Stakeholder communication
Relationship management
Funding decisions, particularly for projects in the public sector, should be informed by data on what works and what doesn’t. But performance assessment is rarely…
Noah Wright
Apr 18, 2023

Portrait of Adolphe Quetelet, superimposed on a photo of blooming purple lilacs. Quetelet portrait from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. Lilacs photo by Arina Bogachyova/iStock.

A demonstration of the law of the flowering plants
Prediction
History of data science
Statistics
The day a flower blooms is one of the earliest phenomena studied with systematic data collection and analysis. The prediction rule developed nearly three centuries ago is…
Jonathan Auerbach
Apr 13, 2023

An illustration of a colorful rainbow, with each band of the rainbow featuring a selection of numbers to represent data. Image created by Bing Image Creator.

Data science as ‘a rainbow’, and other definitions
Updates
Themes
People
Data science means different things to different people. Former RSS president Sylvia Richardson has described it as ‘a rainbow of interconnected disciplines’. What’s your…
Brian Tarran
Mar 29, 2023

Black and white portrait photo of Tamanna Haque.

‘Data science challenges you to keep learning – there’ll always be new advances in the field’
Automotive
Analytics
Leadership
Machine learning
Tamanna Haque, lead data scientist at Jaguar Land Rover, shares her route into data science: from pursuing a maths degree at Manchester to analysing vehicle data for a major…
Brian Tarran
Mar 28, 2023

A teacher is marking homework and trying to decide whether a written piece of text has been created by a student or by a large language model, digital art. Created by DALL·E, prompt by Real World Data Science.

OpenAI’s text classifier won’t calm fears about AI-written homework
AI
Large language models
Classifiers
Screening tests
Educators are worried about ChatGPT being used by students for homework assignments, so OpenAI has released a tool to classify whether text is human- or AI-written. But…
Brian Tarran
Mar 15, 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

Woman painting while wearing virtual reality headset. Photo by Billetto Editorial on Unsplash.

Data science can help close the ‘digital skills’ gap, or so it seems
Skills
Training
AI
Machine learning
Data analytics
A ‘digital skills’ gap is harming employer productivity and growth, according to a survey by engineering body IET. But the ‘digital skills’ that are needed sound a lot like…
Brian Tarran
Feb 14, 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 Detlef Nauck

ChatGPT can hold a conversation, but lacks knowledge representation and original sources for verification
Machine learning
Large language models
AI

ChatGPT represents a next step in the evolution of large language models, says Detlef Nauck. However, there are still major challenges - and concerns - to overcome.

Brian Tarran
Jan 27, 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

Flyer for RSS International Conference 2023, for all statisticians and data scientists. Taking place in Harrogate, 4-7 September 2023.

We’re taking Real World Data Science on the road
Updates
Events

Join us at the RSS International Conference 2023 in Harrogate, 4-7 September.

Brian Tarran
Jan 18, 2023

Photo of an email app on a mobile device screen, showing 2 unread notifications. Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.

Explore the RSS Data Science & AI Section newsletter, right here!
Updates
Newsletters

We’re starting the year with a new addition to the site: a page dedicated to the excellent RSS Data Science & AI Section newsletter.

Brian Tarran
Jan 5, 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

DataScienceBites logo. A dark grey circle with bite marks cut out. Overlaid text says, Import grad_students as writers, import new_research_papers as nrp, print(writers + nrp) and the title DataScienceBites.

Sink your teeth into some data science papers with our brand new blog
Updates
Content ideas
Call for contributions

Today we’re launching DataScienceBites – a new member of the ScienceBites family – offering bite-sized summaries of data science papers.

Brian Tarran
Dec 13, 2022

An image created by the Stable Diffusion 2.1 Demo. The model was asked to produce an image with the prompt, 'Text from an old book cut up like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing'.

LLMs in the news: hype, tripe, and everything in between
Machine learning
Large language models
AI

We’re back discussing large language models after two weeks of ‘breakthrough’ announcements, excitable headlines, and some all-too-familiar ethical concerns.

Brian Tarran
Dec 9, 2022

A screenshot of an exchange between Real World Data Science editor Brian Tarran and ChatGPT.

A chat with ChatGPT
Machine learning
Large language models
AI
’Hello there! I’m a large language model trained by OpenAI, so I don’t have the ability to experience emotions or have a physical presence. I’m here to provide information…
Brian Tarran
Dec 9, 2022

A photo of a black stencilled number 4 on a white brick wall. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Four themes for potential contributors to think about
Updates
Themes
Content ideas

Can data science save the world? What is a data scientist? What statistical ideas do data scientists need to know? And, what’s happening in the world of data science?

Brian Tarran
Dec 1, 2022

A black keyboard at the bottom of the picture has an open book on it, with red words in labels floating on top, with a letter A balanced on top of them. The perspective makes the composition form a kind of triangle from the keyboard to the capital A. The AI filter makes it look like a messy, with a kind of cartoon style.

Why large language models should come with a content warning
Machine learning
Large language models
AI

The outputs of LLMs seem impressive, but users need to be wary of possible bias, plagiarism and model ‘hallucinations’.

Brian Tarran
Nov 23, 2022

Portrait photos of 12 members of the Real World Data Science Editorial team

Meet the team
People
Biographies

Introducing the editors of Real World Data Science.

Editorial Board
Oct 18, 2022
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