Available to book
Kit Yates
Kit Yates, a science speaker and mathematician, helps organisations make better decisions under uncertainty, using the maths of risk and prediction. He is a University of Bath professor and author of the Sunday Times Science Book of the Year.
Kit Yates is a mathematician who explains how numbers shape everyday decisions, from medical tests to financial risk, and helps people spot when the figures in front of them can't be trusted.
Kit is Professor of Mathematical Biology and Public Engagement at the University of Bath, where he co-directs the Centre for Mathematical Biology. He holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and comments regularly for the BBC, The Guardian, and The Independent. His first book, The Maths of Life and Death, was a Sunday Times Science Book of the Year and has been translated into 25 languages. He followed it with How to Expect the Unexpected and, in 2026, You Don't Know What You're Missing.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kit was a member of Independent SAGE, presenting the weekly data at its public briefings and giving evidence to parliamentarians. That work showed him how quickly good decisions fall apart when uncertainty is poorly communicated. He now brings the same thinking to organisations, showing leaders how to separate real patterns from noise, read data critically, and plan for outcomes they can't fully predict.
Audiences leave with practical ways to judge risk, question statistics before acting on them, and recognise the cognitive biases that lead capable people into poor decisions. Kit uses real stories, from courtroom errors to forecasting failures, to make the maths stick.
For events that need clear thinking on data, risk, and uncertainty, Kit brings expert insight in plain language.
Topics, sessions and talks
Forecasts shape strategy, budgets, and hiring, yet most organisations treat them with more confidence than they deserve. Kit Yates draws on his book How to Expect the Unexpected to show why predictions fail, how to tell a real trend from luck, and why certainty is often the riskiest position to hold. Using stories from weather forecasting to financial markets, Kit offers practical ways to calculate risk and build strategies that hold up when the unexpected arrives.
Intelligent, experienced people still fall for misleading statistics, media spin, and biases they don't know they have. Kit Yates uses real-world case studies to show how distorted numbers sway opinion and decisions, from misread percentages to cherry-picked data, and why expertise offers no protection. Kit gives audiences a mathematical detective mindset: slow down, interrogate the data, and expose the hidden assumptions behind the figures in front of them before acting on them.
Some of the biggest risks and opportunities sit in the information nobody collected. Kit Yates draws on his 2026 book, You Don't Know What You're Missing, to show why people, teams, and whole organisations miss crucial information, and how hidden assumptions grow into systemic problems. Kit shows how to see what isn't there, ask better questions of the evidence available, and spot blind spots before they lead to costly errors in decisions, predictions, and innovation.
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frequently asked questions
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To book Kit Yates, email kit.yates@getapeptalk.com or call PepTalk on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US), and one of our speaker agents will contact you within hours to confirm Kit's availability and speaking fee. If you can, please include your budget upfront – it helps us fast-track your request. It’s also helpful to know the date, format (virtual or in-person), location, and about your audience.
Kit Yates builds each talk around real stories, such as courtroom errors, medical tests, and failed forecasts, then unpicks the maths behind them in plain language so audiences can apply the same checks to their own data.
Kit Yates specialises in prediction and uncertainty, why smart people make bad decisions with data, and uncovering the blind spots in the evidence organisations rely on. He is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath and author of The Maths of Life and Death, a Sunday Times Science Book of the Year translated into 25 languages.
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Three to six months ahead is comfortable for most events, and 12 months is better for large conferences, peak-season dates or one specific in-demand speaker. Shorter timelines are workable, and PepTalk regularly fills last-minute and replacement bookings within days. Availability is the constraint, so get in touch as soon as you have a date.
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