Visitors to this year’s Edinburgh International Festival will have had the chance to be stimulated by a special exhibition, The Enlightenments, with its accompanying programme of discussions reflecting on the 18th Century Age of Enlightenment.

 The Enlightenments could have been a fitting title for another Edinburgh-based event this year, the Royal Statistical Society’s annual international conference, taking place from 7-11 September.
 
Instead the conference is more prosaically titled, Statistics in a changing society: 175 years of progress, in recognition of it being the 175th anniversary of the Royal Statistical Society’s foundation as the Statistical Society of London, in 1834.
 
Though it may lack the emotional appeal of Enlightenment works, there is no doubt that statistics as a discipline has been used to enlighten and indeed change society since its origins around the turn of the 18th century. Along the way we find Florence Nightingale using statistics to illustrate death rates in military hospitals, Austin Bradford Hill pioneering randomised clinical trials, William Beveridge setting out the principles of the modern welfare state, and the establishment of the UK’s then Central Statistical Office by Winston Churchill.
 
Modern statistics underpins nearly all modern life. A glance at the conference programme shows just how much. Among the 150-plus contributions are presentations on statistics of health, crime, education and agriculture – areas in which statistics underpin measurement and experiment. Other sessions on financial risk, climate change and swine flu highlight the discipline’s role in helping tackle society’s newest challenges. Yet more sessions relate to the statistics of military engagement, and the place of the discipline in the developing ‘surveillance society’.
 
The wide-ranging nature of statistics is further reflected as the Society takes the opportunity at conference to award two honorary fellowships. These recognise the contribution of individuals working in fields related to statistics who are not members of the statistical profession. Sir Michael Rawlins receives an honorary fellowship for his contributions to public health through his leadership of both the Committee on the Safety of Medicines and the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. Clive Fairweather CBE is made an honorary fellow for his contributions to the health of offenders in Scotland, and of combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
To non-statisticians it can be surprising that statistics has achieved such a pervasive position, though it wouldn’t be to the 400-plus conference delegates (from over 30 countries).
 
All of the topics named above are ones in which there is often uncertainty at an individual level, in which lives are buffeted by events that can appear random and beyond personal control. Quite naturally, therefore, there is a desire to reflect on the past, measure the present and make predictions about the future. Statistical techniques – the discipline’s mathematical tools – can tame these uncertainties, if not completely control them. Indeed, it is the power of these tools that has led to statistics being described as the ‘science of uncertainty’.
 
Because we live in an uncertain world, the benefit of each person having some basic understanding of statistical principles is increasingly recognised. Without such basic knowledge we are left open to statistics being misunderstood or misused (or worse still, abused) – as Straight Statistics is both highlighting and tackling.
 
So, as well as celebrating 175 years of its history and the development of its discipline, the Royal Statistical Society will also be looking at how to bring about a time when people are statistically ‘literate’, allowing each and every person to critically question authority.
 
In the words of current Society President, Professor David Hand, in the concluding paragraph of his book, Statistics: a very short introduction:
 
 “… modern statistics, based on deep philosophical foundations, is the art of discovery. Modern statistics enables us to tease out the secrets of the universe around us. Modern statistics enables understanding.”
 
Perhaps not too different from the 18th century Enlightenment after all?
 
·         Anyone interested in the discussions taking place at the Royal Statistical Society’s conference can follow proceedings through the conference blog
 
Andrew Garratt is Theme Manager for External Relations and the Statistics User Community of the RSS