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Join us for a fun, hands-on session playing The Linkmaster’s Dilemma, a boardgame about how information from different places gets joined together. No background in statistics, data science or research is needed.
Through the game, you will take on the challenge of understanding how large datasets are put together. Along the way, we will explore why this can be tricky, what happens when information is missing or inconsistent, and how design choices and methods used can affect people differently. The session will open up friendly discussion about fairness, trust and how data is used in research and public services.
Expect conversation, teamwork, a few difficult choices, and a playful introduction to an important real-world issue.
Session leads
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Dr Joseph (Jo) Lam is a research fellow. His research focuses on improving research on health equity and the representation of missed populations in longitudinal data and linked administrative data. He is the project PI for the Annual Household Income subdivided in Quintiles (AHIQ) project funded by HDR UK. He co-chairs the Improving Transparency Around Linkage Outputs (ITALO) community group and working group. Jo leads multiple public engagement projects on data linkage, financial and health data, adolescent mental health and data equity. Jo has a PhD in Health Data Science and Statistics from University College London. | |
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Rachel is a Service Designer with over six years’ experience shaping human-centred services across the public sector, health, and social care. She enjoys bringing people together through conversations and workshops to make complex systems more understandable, inclusive, and useful. Her work focuses on translating insights into practical improvements that work for both users and organisations. She is particularly interested in collaborating across disciplines, and applying innovative approaches to help people engage in creating social impact. |
