Professor Tony Myers, Inaugural Lecture

Professor Myers delivered his inaugural lecture “Changing minds and embracing uncertainty in quantitative statistics” to an audience of scholars, colleagues, family and friends.

The lecture examined the benefits and challenges of using quantitative methods by exploring a body of research that investigated judging in the sport of Muay Thai.

Professor Myers’ research programme applied western epistemologies to convince the international community of the value of eastern judging methods, and as a result, changed the way judges decide the winner of Muay Thai bouts in several western countries.

The studies used to inform this programme provide a useful lens for viewing some key decisions in quantitative research. The thought-provoking lecture challenged the view that quantitative research is a purely objective undertaking. Professor Myers highlighted the subjective choices that sometimes masquerade as immutable rules, dispelling the myth of certainty, discussing the challenge of generalisation, highlighting some other common misunderstandings and offering some solutions using traditional and Bayesian methods.