Friday, morning: the Significance session - the last session of the last day of the conference – is about to start. I hope lots of people have decided to delay getting on their trains back home for an early weekend, so that they can stay and hear it. Lots of things have been happening to Significance this year, from the ASA linkup to an all-singing, all-dancing website that is about to start, and I want to tell delegates about our plans for World Domination – fledgling so far, but even Rupert Murdoch’s media empire had to start somewhere. But my bit is only the intro. We try to make the Significance session the entertainments high-spot of the conference; and this year, with Danny Dorling and Yan Wong as guest speakers, we should achieve that fairly effortlessly.
They have both turned into media stars at communicating science and stats; and they have both done good stuff for Significance. Yan’s pleasantly surreal piece was on cows pointing north. Danny’s several pieces included one on his mad, wrong-shaped maps of the world, which looked rather fantastic on the page and made that piece one of the best-looking that we have ever run. Yan doesn’t only have a Ph.D in genetic self-destruct mechanisms in plants; he hasn’t only helped Richard Dawkins write his best-selling ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’; his big-time fame comes from presenting BBC’s flagship popular science programme ‘Bang Goes the Theory’ – which by excellent timing has just started its third series. It’s had magnetic cows, cyclists powering a house, and spawned a facebook ‘We Love Yan’ page. Episode 2 of Bang Goes the Theory is on tonight, at 7.30. Catch it!
But first catch him, and Danny, at the Significance plenary session. 12.15. Be there!
Julian Champkin,
Editor, Significance.
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