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[1st Week]
MT3 Newsletter: A Fascinating Talk on Vaccine Survey Stats, Learn to Code Session 2 &
Board Game Bash!
Hi everyone,
It's been a weird week news-wise right!? Well, despite all the political chaos right
now, there'll always be one thing you can be sure of... cool CompSoc events. Great to
see lots of you last week - stay tuned for our first academic Thursday Talk and more!
- the CompSoc committee
Still not a member? Membership only costs £1 for LIFE, with tons of benefits - discounts
on merch and tickets, free food at all socials, our exclusive Discord server and more - so
it's definitely worth signing up!
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[Events]
Thursday Talk: Unrepresentative Big Surveys Significantly Overestimate US Vaccine Uptake,
by Seth Flaxman
[Lecture theatre picture]
(Bradley et al, Nature 2021,
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04198-4<https://www.nature.co…
Abstract:
Surveys are a crucial tool for understanding public opinion and behaviour, and their
accuracy depends on maintaining statistical representativeness of their target populations
by minimizing biases from all sources. Increasing data size shrinks confidence intervals
but magnifies the effect of survey bias: an instance of the Big Data Paradox. Here we
demonstrate this paradox in estimates of first-dose COVID-19 vaccine uptake in US adults
from 9 January to 19 May 2021 from two large surveys: Delphi–Facebook (about 250,000
responses per week) and Census Household Pulse4 (about 75,000 every two weeks). In May
2021, Delphi–Facebook overestimated uptake by 17 percentage points (14–20 percentage
points with 5% benchmark imprecision) and Census Household Pulse by 14 (11–17 percentage
points with 5% benchmark imprecision), compared to a retroactively updated benchmark the
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention published on 26 May 2021. Moreover, their large
sample sizes led to miniscule margins of error on the incorrect estimates. By contrast, an
Axios–Ipsos online panel with about 1,000 responses per week following survey research
best practices provided reliable estimates and uncertainty quantification. We decompose
observed error using a recent analytic framework to explain the inaccuracy in the three
surveys. We then analyse the implications for vaccine hesitancy and willingness. We show
how a survey of 250,000 respondents can produce an estimate of the population mean that is
no more accurate than an estimate from a simple random sample of size 10. Our central
message is that data quality matters more than data quantity, and that compensating the
former with the latter is a mathematically provable losing proposition.
About our speaker:
I am an associate professor at the University of Oxford in the Department of Computer
Science and a Tutorial Fellow in Jesus College. My research is on scalable methods and
flexible models for spatiotemporal statistics and Bayesian machine learning, applied to
public policy and social science. Active application areas include public and global
health and machine learning for science. I co-founded the Machine Learning & Global
Health Network (
MLGH.net) and I help run the WHO-associated "Global Reference Group
on Children Affected by COVID-19." My research is currently supported by an EPSRC
Fellowship (2020-2025), “Spatiotemporal Statistical Machine Learning (ST-SML): Theory,
Methods, and Applications.”
TL;DR: Big surveys are often far from reliable, especially when related to Covid-19 - come
to the talk if you're interested in vaccines, statistics or big data and want to find
out more!
When: 5-6PM, Thursday 27th October
Where: Lecture Theatre B, Department of Computer Science 7 Parks Rd, Oxford OX1 3QG
Click 'Going' here:
https://fb.me/e/2H2J9YxXh
Learn to Code Session 2 (Bring your laptop!)
[Code picture]
Join us for the second session of our hugely popular Learn to Code series, aimed at
complete beginners! Our amazing coding officers will guide you through learning Python,
from the absolute basics to making your very own game by the end of the course. If
you've ever wanted to pick up coding, but felt it was hard, frustrating, or just
didn't know where to start, this is the perfect event series for you. Non-members and
members alike are free to come along! Bring your laptop!!
Course Materials:
https://github.com/oxcompsoc/learntocode
When: 6-7PM, Saturday 29th October
Where: Lecture Theatre B, Department of Computer Science 7 Parks Rd, Oxford OX1 3QG
Click 'Going' here:
https://fb.me/e/2lfwCxOla
Saturday Social: Board Game Bash!
[Gaming picture]
What kind of board gamer are you - a massive strategy nerd, with the perfect winning
algorithm falling into place in your mind? A mental minmaxer, tallying up the
probabilities and making the wildest leaps in Codenames? Or just prefer to relax with a
nice game of snakes and ladders (which technically has 0 players, but it's all about
the drama right)? However you choose to play, you'll definitely have fun at our mega
board game bash this Saturday! We'll have a huge selection of various games and decks
of cards... and pizza for members ;)
p.s. yeah, this is the same night as Oxford Board Games Soc, but we'll be less crowded
AND have food! and all the nerdiest strat chat.
When: 7-11PM, Saturday 29th October
Where: Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science 7 Parks Rd, Oxford OX1
3QG
Click 'Going' here:
https://fb.me/e/2oezN9LEI
[And More...]
Laptop Stickers still available!
[Gaming picture]
The misprinted white ones are surprisingly popular huh...
Check out OxWoCS!
Make sure to join OxWoCS (Oxford Women in CS), a society we're working closely with,
if you identify as a woman or woman-adjacent person in CS! They have a host of wonderful
events on, including talks, panels and socials. Computer Science is unfortunately a
subject with one of the biggest gender gaps in Oxford and worldwide, and addressing this
is at the core of OxWoCS.
They have a (free) lunch social coming up on the 28th, in the CS Department atrium!
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