Brian Tarran, editor of Significance (www.significancemagazine.com), interviews Lancaster University’s Harry Spearing (https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/~spearing/) about the application of extreme value theory to the ranking of Olympic swimmers, as well as ranking in sports more generally.

Mags Wiley interviews Debbie Keatley, from use MY data about the group’s aims and the benefits of sharing health data to improve patient outcomes.

To find out more about use MY data go to:

http://www.usemydata.org/

Sara McDonnell talked to Professor David Firth of the University of Warwick about ‘spaed rankings’ and how they have been performing when predicting Premier League football end-of-season standings.

Mags Wiley interviews Kevin Johanson, from the Expert Group on Sámi Statistics based in Norway, on how the group is working on developing statistics on the Sámi people and how these statistics can lead to better policymaking.

Professor Deborah Ashby gave her RSS President's Address on 25th June 2019 in London. We caught up with Deborah to talk about her statistical background, her career in medical statistics and why growing capacity to use data for society is a particular passion of hers.

Martin Bland, Emeritus Professor of Health Statistics from the University of York, shares stories from his statistical journey and friendship with the celebrated medical statistician Doug Altman, who sadly passed away in 2018. Doug Altman is considered by many to have contributed more than any other statistician to improving the evidence for clinical practice. A world-leading expert on health research methodology and reporting, Doug was director for the Centre for Statistics in Medicine and professor of statistics in medicine at the University of Oxford, posts he held for more than 20 years: https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/3817-douglas-altman-1948-2018

Emerging Threats by Royal Statistical Society