KIND network update
Week beginning Mon 7th October 2024
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to our regular KIND network update. I’m away for the second half of October, which will necessitate a brief pause for our training and community events. We’ll be back in late October, and you can expect the next regular email update in early November. Hope to see you at something then.
Brendan
Wins of The Week
In the spirit of #IAmRemarkable, we do a weekly wins of the week thread to celebrate the professional (and personal) achievements of the community. A random selection from last week:
- I owned a work mistake and the world did not explode
- Using a chi-square test of independence on a dataset (when I wasn’t asked to) and the requestor actually understanding and really liking the outputs
- I pushed against my introvert preference and held a training session to help staff understand the relationship between DATIX incidents, the boards risk strategy and H&S actions
- I have managed to build a small shiny app. Although I have a long way to go. I am feeling really proud
Training sessions
| Session | Date | Area | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Excel formulas | 09:30-10:30 Tue 8th October 2024 | Excel | 🌶 :beginner-level |
| R from scratch (session 6) | 14:30-15:30 Tue 8th October 2024 | R | 🌶 :beginner-level |
| Tableau for beginners (session 4) | 13:00-15:00 Thu 10th October 2024 | Tableau | 🌶 :beginner-level |
Events
- 3-4pm, Mon 7th October 2024. All welcome at the Community Meetup - our regular Monday get-together/webinar/tech demo. Full details and joining links via the community meetup channel. The theme this week is working with user requests. We’ll be looking at some examples of good ideas from the community about how to work more easily and effectively with user requests.
Book of the week
c(“Gerd Gigerenzer”, “Harry Parker”, “M. Neil Browne and Stuart M. Keeley”, “Brian Christian”, “Gwen Adshead”, “Mervyn King”). c(“2002”, “2022”, “2006”, “2020”, “2021”, “2016”). c(“Reckoning with Risk: Learning to Live with Uncertainty”, “Hybrid Humans: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Man and Machine”, “Asking the right questions: a guide to critical thinking”, “The Alignment Problem”, “The Devil You Know - Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry”, “The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy”).
ISBN c(“978-0713995122”, “978-1788163101”, “978-0132203043”, “978-1786494337”, “978-0571357628”, “978-1408706114”), Worldcat.
c(“How do you communicate risks? For many of us who work with knowledge, information, and data, the natural way of doing that is by talking about probabilities. This book, which is a lively and provoking introduction to the frequency format hypothesis might give us cause for pause: it turns out that frequencies serve as much stronger communicators of risk than probabilities. So if you want to communicate a risk, there’s a good reason to prefer saying 8 out of 10 people rather than 80% of people.”, “This week’s recommendation comes from Kelsey Pearson a Business Intelligence Analyst at the University of Edinburgh. They write: ‘Harry Parker lost his legs to an IED in Afghanistan and now has prosthetic legs. He goes on to learn about medical technology and their implications for what it means to be human. He learns about early examples of prosthetics and technology (e.g. iron lungs) used to support those with disabilities and illnesses. He also learns about current and future technological advancements such as brain chips, bionic eyes, and exoskeletons. I enjoyed the discussions around identity and whether we’re all hybrids to some degree. Think about your phone, headphones, and smartwatch…’”, “This week’s recommendation comes from Alupha Chan, a Research IT Facilitator at NHS Tayside who writes: ‘I think this book will go well with this group. This used to be a mandatory reading for my Communications (PR) dip. nearly 2 decades ago - one of the chapters is dedicated in looking at whether presented stats are deceptive.’ Having had a look at this book, I’d recommend it too - lots of great material here for thinking hard about more complicated questions.”, “This is a high-risk recommendation, because I’ve only read a few chapters of this friendly (and alarming) introduction to AI. But there’s a good reason for the slightly-impetuous premature recommendation, as the public sector Data Ethics and Society Reading Group will be hosting a session on the book on the 3rd of December, so just about time to get a copy if you fancy joining what should be an excellent discussion then.”, “This week’s recommendation comes from Louise Stuart, a Health and Work Adviser at Public Health Scotland, who writes: ‘I used to work as an OT in a low secure forensic mental health hospital so it was nostalgic to revisit my time on the wards through this book. The author offers a compassionate insight into those who are accessing forensic mental health services with each chapter focusing on a different patients story and journey. I found this book to be a powerful and thoughtful read, and I would thoroughly recommend.’”, “Colin Smith, an information analyst at NHS GGC writes to recommend this book: ‘A very interesting book from 2016. Not medical but given we’ve another potential round of ’austerity’ on the way, still relevant as to how we run the economy and fund the NHS and public services.’”).