David Hand

David Hand is an emeritus professor of mathematics and chair of the research board of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College, London, where he formerly held the chair in statistics. He is a non-executive director on the board of the UK Statistics Authority, a member of the European Statistical Advisory Committee and a past president of the Royal Statistical Society and of the International Federation of Classification Societies. He is also chief scientific advisor to Winton Capital Management, one of Europe's most successful algorithmic trading hedge funds.

He has a lifelong interest in the use of data, especially large data sets, for public good, and has served on the expert statistics panel of AstraZeneca, the biometrics advisory board of GlaxoSmithKline, and the methodology advisory committee of the UK’s Office for National Statistics, as well as working closely with many other bodies in both private and public sectors. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Guy Medal of the Royal Statistical Society, the IEEE-ICDM Outstanding Contributions Award and the Box Medal for Business and Industrial Statistics, and has been awarded the OBE for services to research and innovation.

His books include Principles of Data Mining, Information Generation, Measurement Theory and Practice, The Improbability Principle, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction, The Wellbeing of Nations and Measurement: A Very Short Introduction. He is the coauthor or editor/coeditor of several academic titles, has published some 300 scientific papers and written popular articles for publications ranging from Mathematics Today to the Guardian.

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