Editors’ Blog

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, staff and members that I’ve been fortunate to work with over the years.

Mar 6, 2024

Brian Tarran

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

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 of the risk of ‘regulatory capture.’ Here are some key takeaways.

Feb 8, 2024

Brian Tarran

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.

Jan 22, 2024

Brian Tarran

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 your work featured on Real World Data Science.

Jan 18, 2024

Brian Tarran

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 publication for the data science community.

Jan 3, 2024

Brian Tarran

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

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 community of Real World Data Science readers and contributors. Thank you for supporting us this year!

Dec 12, 2023

Brian Tarran

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’

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 posed by the ‘democratisation of disinformation.’

Dec 8, 2023

Brian Tarran

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

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 topic of artificial intelligence – risks, benefits, evaluation, and regulation. Watch the panel discussion in full!

Oct 30, 2023

Brian Tarran

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!

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, exploring how data science and statistics can help make sense of AI models. Halloween costumes not required…

Oct 10, 2023

Brian Tarran

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 site.

Oct 2, 2023

Brian Tarran

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 a selection of talks and sessions.

Sep 27, 2023

Brian Tarran

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 format.

Sep 12, 2023

Brian Tarran

Exterior photo of the Harrogate Convention Centre.

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

Machine learning

Data visualisation

Events

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

Aug 24, 2023

Brian Tarran

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 regularly for updates.

Aug 15, 2023

Brian Tarran

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 excite children in a career in data science.’

Jul 27, 2023

Brian Tarran

Person sitting in front of a screen of code.

Testing out ChatGPT’s new Code Interpreter

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 hailed it ‘the new data scientist’, but is it all it’s cracked up to be? Real World Data Science takes Code Interpreter for a test drive.

Jul 19, 2023

Lee Clewley

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

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 a workshop to help charities tap into statistical expertise.

Jul 7, 2023

Brian Tarran

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

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, but people are also concerned about the dangers of overreliance on the technologies and a lack of clarity around accountability.

Jun 13, 2023

Brian Tarran

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 this week. Here are our key takeaways.

May 26, 2023

Brian Tarran

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 personal definition?

Mar 29, 2023

Brian Tarran

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

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 relying on the classifier’s results is ill-advised, as some basic statistics shows.

Mar 15, 2023

Brian Tarran

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

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 data science skills: statistical understanding, data analytics, AI and machine learning.

Feb 14, 2023

Brian Tarran

ChatGPT can hold a conversation, but lacks knowledge representation and original sources for verification

Machine learning

Large language models

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.

Jan 27, 2023

Brian Tarran

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.

Jan 18, 2023

Brian Tarran

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.

Jan 5, 2023

Brian Tarran

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.

Dec 13, 2022

Brian Tarran

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

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

Dec 9, 2022

Brian Tarran

A chat with ChatGPT

Machine learning

Large language models

‘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 and answer questions to the best of my ability. Is there something specific you would like to know?’

Dec 9, 2022

Brian Tarran

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?

Dec 1, 2022

Brian Tarran