Submitted by A.S. Quenault on Mon, 27/04/2026 - 11:13
On Saturday 21 March, the BSU took part in the Biomedical Campus Day for Cambridge Festival 2026.
Cambridge Festival is an annual event coordinated by the University of Cambridge’s Public Engagement team. It is a multidisciplinary festival with a mix of online, on-demand, and in-person events covering all aspects of the world-leading research happening in Cambridge. The Festival brings together many departments, institutions, and groups within the University and more broadly, representing the diverse range of fantastic work and research that happens in Cambridge.
This year, the BSU took two hands-on activities on the theme of having fun with statistics. One was a competitive game focused on communicating the concept of capture-recapture studies using a numbers mat and pink and yellow numbered ducks, with one minute to match the numbers on the ducks to the numbers on mat and counting how many of each are on the mat and how many have both pink and yellow - .an example of how to use statistical methods to estimate how many people have a specific illness or belong to a risk group. The other was an interactive game using a bespoke board and marbles to represent the idea of how we identify the best treatment for multiple difference patients with the same illness.
We welcomed over 200 visitors ranging from 18 months to 70+ years old, who all enthusiastically got involved in our activities and also had some conversations with our researchers about medical statistics and its importance in helping us to understand lots of different clinical and public health problems. One visitor said:
"Thank you for organising such fun and interactive activities."
It would not be possible for the Unit to take part in important science outreach events such as Cambridge Festival without the fantastic team of volunteers who helped out on the day to run our activities and chat with visitors. Thanks so much to: Emily Bassett, Rebecca Brock, Julie Fendler, Robert Goudie, Luke Hardcastle, Nikita Mozgunov, Tilly Pitt, Oscar Rueda, Romit Samanta, Shaun Seaman, Elena Vigorito, Sofia Villar, Simon White and Xinzhi Zhang.