Research

Research Interests:

Full and current details of my research can be found on my home page.

My current research focuses primarily on quantitative risk assessment. This typically involves analysing and predicting the probabilities of unknown events using Bayesian statistical methods including especially causal, probabilistic models (Bayesian Networks). This type of reasoning enables improved assessment by taking account of both statistical data and also expert judgment. In April 2014 I was awarded one of the prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grants to focus on these issues. 

My research involves developing both general purpose and application specific methods that enable non-experts to build and use models to solve real-world 'risk assessment' problems. This includes applications such as legal reasoning (I have been an expert witness in major criminal and civil cases), medical trials, vehicle reliability, embedded software, transport systems, financial services, media personalisation and football results prediction. I have provided consulting to many major companies world-wide on these applications. I have a special interest in raising public awareness of the importance of probability theory and Bayesian reasoning in everyday life (including how to present such reasoning in simple lay terms) and maintain a also a blog and also a website dedicated to this. I have published 7 books and over 200 referred articles. My 2012 book was the first to bring Bayesian networks to a general audience. Since June 2011 I have led an international consortium (Bayes and the Law) of statisticians, lawyers and forensic scientists working to improve the use of statistics in court. In 2016 I led a prestigious 6-month Programme on Probability and Statistics in Forensic Science at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge.

In addition to my research on risk assessment, I have a long track record of work in software engineering (including pioneering work on software metrics); the new third edition of my book “Software Metrics: A Rigorous and Practical Approach” was published in November 2014. 

Publications