Covid Data (with Professor Norman Fenton)

Introduction

This week’s note features a podcast with Professor Norman Fenton. Norman is Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London (retired as Full Professor December 2022) and a Director of Agena, a company that specialises in artificial intelligence and Bayesian probabilistic reasoning. He has published 7 books and over 400 peer reviewed articles. It’s fair to call him an expert in numbers, data and probability. Some of Norman’s most interesting work involves law and forensics. He has been an expert witness in major criminal and civil cases where the probability of something happening can be critical to the verdict.

The podcast was arranged to discuss Norman’s book, “Fighting Goliath”, which has just been published (Ref 1). The book was co-authored with Professor Martin Neil, with whom Norman has worked for many years. Martin is a statistician and computer scientist. He is a Professor of Computer Science and Statistics in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London. Martin has published 2 books and over 100 peer reviewed articles. They make a formidable partnership.

“Fighting Goliath” is based on Norman and Martin’s Substack, “Where Are the Numbers?” It asked questions about the data and numbers during the Covid-19 era. For example, the number of positive PCR tests, what counted as cases, mortality data and what this included. Their Substack also delved into the number of people vaccinated or unvaccinated and how this was defined, as well as efficacy numbers and what they meant. The Substack goes wherever interesting data go, so the most recent post (at the time of writing) is on childhood poverty in the UK (Ref 2). But the book and our podcast (watch/listen below) were focused on Covid data.