David Hand, senior research investigator and Emeritus Professor of mathematics at Imperial College, London, will be among guest speakers at the CISI’s Financial Planning Annual Conference. It takes place from Monday to Wednesday at Celtic Manor.
The chief scientific advisor to Winton Capital Management wrote a book called The Improbability Principle: Why coincidences, miracles and rare events happen all the time.
In it, he argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but and in actual fact, they're commonplace.
Jackie Lockie CFPTM Chartered FSCI, CISI deputy head of Financial Planning, said: “I think this is going to be one of the most interesting sessions at the conference.”
Prof Hand has argued that no mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, and he doesn’t subscribe to superstitions and the paranormal.
His work examines why financial crashes are “par for the course” and why lightning does strike the same place and the same person twice.
At the conference, he will discuss why, retrospectively, we see certain events as rare events or miracles, and asks if that is that really the case.
The session will take a statistical look at the factors that lead people to such conclusions and why the world is full of coincidences.
His session takes place at 4pm on Monday.
More than 300 Financial Planners will be at the event, with an expected attendance of 458. There will be over 30 exhibitors.
Among the keynote speakers during the three days will be Noel Maye, CEO of the Financial Planning Standards Board, and former Pensions Minister Steve Webb.