Mad about math

WHEN an abnormally high number of babies died in heart surgery in a hospital in Bristol in the United Kingdom in the late 1990s, investigators running a public inquiry turned to David Spiegelhalter for statistical help. And when British authorities wanted to find out whether one of the country's most prolific serial killers - Harold Shipman, a doctor who reportedly murdered more than 200 of his patients and was caught in the late 1990s because he forged a will - could have been nabbed sooner, Prof Spiegelhalter again answered the call.

"We concluded that he (Shipman) could have been caught a lot earlier if somebody had been looking at the data," recalls t…