• How unlikely is it to win a lottery jackpot? Why do strange coincidences occur so often? These questions answered at University of Warwick public lecture by world-famous statistician
• FREE event explores how numbers can expose scandals, save lives - and help us make sense of the world around us
• Jeff Rosenthal is Professor of Statistics at the University of Toronto – he is an expert in maths and statistics, and a musician and comedian, and strives to make complicated facts accessible to everyone
• No mathematical knowledge is required for this talk, and it is open to everyone – of all ages – in the local community

How unlikely is it to win a lottery jackpot? Why do strange coincidences occur so often? If you flip one hundred coins, how close will the number of heads be to fifty?

These questions – and more - will be answered by the world-famous statistician Jeff Rosenthal, during his public talk on randomness and probability at the University of Warwick next week.

Hosted by the Department of Statistics, this FREE event explores how numbers can expose scandals, save lives - and help us make sense of the world around us.

Find out how statistics helped to expose the Ontario Lottery Retailer Scandal, why casinos always make money, even though gamblers sometimes win and sometimes lose, how accurate poll samples are – and how this all relates to Monte Carlo Algorithms, an extremely popular method of scientific computing.

Jeff Rosenthal is Professor of Statistics at the University of Toronto in Canada, and he is flying to the UK for this public talk at Warwick.

As well as being an internationally-renowned expert in maths and statistics, he is a musician and comedian – and strives to make complicated facts and theories accessible to everyone.

No mathematical knowledge is required for this talk, and it is open to everyone – of all ages – in the local community.

Jeff Rosenthal commented:

"Probability and randomness arise whenever we're not sure what will happen next, and a little understanding can go a long way to making sense of the world.

“This talk is open to anyone and does not require any background knowledge, so I hope lots of people will attend!"

Professor Mark Steel, Head of Warwick’s Department of Statistics, said:

“We are truly delighted to have such a wonderful and entertaining speaker for this year's Statistics public lecture.

“Jeff Rosenthal has received numerous prestigious awards for both his research and his teaching and has been very successful in explaining probability concepts to the general public and relating them to everyday situations.”

The event, From Lotteries to Polls to Monte Carlo, takes place on Wednesday 3 May 2017 at 6.15pm in the Zeeman Building (Maths and Statistics), University of Warwick, CV4 7HP.

Free refreshments will be provided afterwards.

For further information on the event, click here.

To register your FREE place, click here.

Notes to editors:

Jeff Rosenthal is available for interviews during the week of the lecture.

Warwick Statistics and Warwick Mathematics Institute together rank third nationally among Mathematical Sciences research groups, in the most recent UK government research assessment (REF 2014).

More than 90% of research work was assessed as either internationally excellent or world leading (the highest grades, 3* and 4*, in REF 2014).

The research environment at Warwick is rated by REF 2014 as the very best in the UK for mathematical sciences (achieving the maximum possible score of 100% at 4*).

24 April 2017

Further information, contact:

Luke Walton, International Press Officer

+44 (0) 7824 540 863

+44 (0) 2476 150 868

L dot Walton dot 1 at warwick dot ac dot uk