Dr Arthur Turrell
Arthur Turrell is Acting Director of the Data Science Campus at the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Following studies in physics and mathematics, Arthur obtained his PhD in plasma physics from Imperial College London. He retains a keen interest in physics and has written a popular science book about nuclear fusion titled ‘The Star Builders’. He began his career in the public sector as a research economist in the Bank of England’s data science team where he led projects combining economics and data science. While at the Bank, he chose mathematical elements of Alan Turing’s work to feature on the UK’s £50 note and published research on labour markets, real-time data, natural language processing, forecasting, and macroeconomic modelling. He is also the author of several open source software packages and the open source online training book ‘Coding for Economists’. In 2021, he moved to the Data Science Campus, the UK public sector’s centre of excellence in data science.
Talk - The Wonders of Data Science
Data science, coding, and computing have exploded in recent years. Debates about ‘the data’, algorithms, and even modelling are now part of the national discourse. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and machine learning seem to come ever faster. But what is data science? And can it really help us? In this talk, I’ll tell you what data science is, why its rise is important, and how it can be used to do good. At the ONS’ Data Science Campus, our motto is ‘data science for the public good’ and I’ll let you in on the secrets of how we are putting tools from the cutting-edge of this new discipline to work—both in the UK and internationally. The extraordinary stories of data science doing good in the public sector will take us everywhere from traffic jams, to the cost of living, to counting cows in South Sudan and more.