Seminar Title: How to Harness Data to Improve your Decision-making and Increase your Probability of Success.

Data interpretation has been central to many government decisions about implementing lockdowns and travel restrictions. The pandemic has demonstrated the importance of using data for decision-making, but also the need to be able to present and communicate data to a wide audience to help achieve “buy-in” from populations.

As such, statistical and data literacy are key skills that are likely to be in ever-greater demand in a post-Covid world. Educating future generations in the art of data visualization is an excellent starting point in this endeavour as students develop the ability to communicate a large amount of information to audiences efficiently. Bringing data to life in meaningful ways can identify important trends, patterns, relationships, and anomalies that facilitate successful strategies. It is also necessary to construct models to deep dive into the world of data analytics.

From forecasting to “understanding the causes of things”, we consider some of the essential ingredients for a valuable statistical toolbox in the post-Covid future.