Peter J. Diggle

CHICAS,
Lancaster Medical School,
Lancaster University,
Lancaster, LA1 4YB,
UK
Phone: 1524-593957
email: p.diggle@lancaster.ac.uk

I play badminton (very occasonally nowadays) with Mandy, Jono and Hannah, and explore the countryside on my e-bike as often as I can. I play guitar (folk and blues) and tenor recorder (early music for preference). I listen to all kinds of music, but particularly like jazz (especially Charlie Parker and John Coltrane) and Italian opera. My boyhood hero was Stirling Moss. I still take an interest in classic cars and historic motor racing. I enjoy cooking and eating. My favourite Lancaster restaurants include Etna's, The Bay Horse and Quite Simply French . My favourite authors include George Orwell and Nigel Slater.

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/diggle/

Research interests

My main methodological research interests are in spatial statistics, longitudinal data analysis and environmental epidemiology. Most of my research is motivated by applications in the biomedical, clinical or health sciences. I am particularly interested in real-time health surveillance and in tropical disease epidemiology.

Positions held

Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in CHICAS, a teaching and research group within the Lancaster Medical School at Lancaster University working at the interface of statistics, epidemiology and health informatics.

Trustee for Biometrika
Founding joint editor of Biostatistics
Former President 2014-2016 of the Royal Statistical Society
Former chair of the UK Medical Research Council's Skills Development Fellowships Panel

Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Yale University School of Public Health

Curriculum vitae

My CV gives more details, including publications, grants, ...

Royal Statistical Society Presidential Address

The RSS has posted a video of my Presidential Address 24 June 2015

Statistics and Scientific Method: an Introduction for Students and Researchers

The web-page for this text-book by Amanda Chetwynd and Peter Diggle includes data-sets, R scripts to reproduce the analyses in the book, and a list of errata. Course materials from my delivery of a course at AIMS Rwanda based loosely on the book can be found here

R

One of many nice on-line resources for R is Karl Broman's Introduction to R page.

Downloads

Books

Information about my second book on geostatistics: Diggle, P.J. and Giorgi, E. (2019). Model-based Geostatistics: Methods and Applications in Global Public Health. Boca Raton: CRC Press (but note that the web-address given in the Preface is incorrect)
Information about my first book on geostatistics: Diggle, P.J. and Ribeiro, P.J. Jnr (2007). Model-based Geostatistics. New York: Springer
Information about my book on longitudinal data analysis: Diggle, P.J., Heagerty, P., Liang K-Y. and Zeger, S.L. (2002). Analysis of Longitudinal Data (second edition). Oxford: OUP
Information about my book on spatial point patterns: Diggle, P.J. (2003). Statistical Analysis of Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Point Patterns (third edition, in preparation)
Information about my book on time series analysis:  Diggle, P.J. (1990). Time Series: a biostatistical introduction. Oxford: OUP.

Lecture notes

PDF lecture-notes on CTM Lecture to third-year medical students
PDF lecture-notes on Longitudinal Data Analysis (Belfast, 18 February 2015)
Lecture-material on Statistics and Scientific Method (Leahurst, September 2012)
Course materials on Model-based Geostatistics (Malawi, 2015)
Course materials for Franqui Chair lectures on Model-based geostatistics delivered in Hasselt, Belgium, May 2018
Instructional material on Geospatial Data in R and Beyond by Barry Rowlingson
Powerpoint slides on Russ Lenth's sample size calculator
A model-based geostatistics teaching app by Olatunji Johnson and colleagues

Other documents

An interactive history of graphics with thanks to Barry Rowlingson
A Primer on Decision Making with Uncertainty aimed at a lay audience, co-authored with Tim Gowers, Frank Kelly and Neil Lawrence
PDF guide on Converting UK post-codes to (x,y)-coordinates by Michelle Stanton
An analysis of the (thankfully short-lived) proposals to use RAE Metrics in place of peer review
Some Johns Hopkins Biostatistics Tech Reports
Important information for Bayesians who want to impress (a rose by any other name ...)

Data-sets

spatial point pattern data-sets from Diggle (2003)
longitudinal data-sets from Diggle, Heagerty, Liang and Zeger (2002)
additional data-sets that may be of interest
Guyana LF Intervention Impact Survey

Software

Information about spatial point pattern software
Information about geostatistical software
An R function for prevalence estimation using an imperfect test

Demos, animations

Interactive coronavirus epidemic curves by Max Eyre
COVID-19 in the English Midlands 14 to 28 June 2020. Probability, at LSOA-level resolution, that local incidence is greater than national incidence, colour coded from dark blue (zero) to bright yellow (one)
Malaria indicator mapping around Majete Wildlife Reserve, southern Malawi by Benjamin Amoah
Malaria prevalence mapping in Chikwawa, southern Malawi by Emanuele Giorgi
SAVSNET Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance Network, a University of Liverpool project to which we are adding statistical analysis capability
110 years of malaria prevalence mapping in Senegal by Emanuele Giorgi and Peter Diggle
Spatial analysis of criminal activity in Lancashire by Irene Kaimi, Peter Diggle and Alexandre Rodrigues
Demo of spatio-temporal disease surveillance (Diggle, P.J., Rowlingson, B. and Su, T-L. (2005). Environmetrics, 16, 423-34)
John Snow's cholera map from the 1854 epidemic in Soho, London
(for a cleaned-up version, see page 24 of Tufte (2001) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information)
Animation of gastro-enteric infections in Hampshire, UK, by Barry Rowlingson
Animation of common tern nesting colony in Delta D'Ebre, Spain by Irene Kaimi, also of first and second of two simulated realisations of fitted model
Animation of campylobacteriosis cases in Preston, UK, by Edith Gabriel and Barry Rowlingson
Animation of the 2001 Foot-and-mouth epidemic in Cumbria, UK, by Barry Rowlingson (Diggle, P.J. (2006). Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 15, 325-336)
Animation of meningits incidence in Niger, by Barry Rowlingson
Animation of malaria prevalence in Chikwawa, southern Malawi, by Emanuele Giorgi

Seminars and conferences

Model-Based Geostatistics for Prevalence Mapping in Low-Resource Settings: RSS East Midlands Local Group, February 2015.
ENAR2009 Invited Presidential Address: Statistical Modelling for Real-time Epidemiology.
IGH Retreat, June 2012: Modelling spatio-temporal patterns of disease.
Plenary Lecture, International Biometrics Congress, July 2020: Model-based Geostatistics for Better Global Health.


MERIT meeting, Niamey, Niger, November 2009

The MERIT home page gives you the scientific background, or you can look at some photos of our post-meeting day out.

APTS: Spatial and Longitudinal Data analysis

The Academy for PhD Training in Statistics initiative runs a series of residential courses targeted at first-year postgraduate students who are studying for a PhD in statistics at any UK university. For severalyears, I taught a course on Spatial and Longitudinal Data analysis as part of this initiative. Course material available here includes:
Preliminary notes and exercises
Lecture course slides
Data-sets
Assessment exercise

Last Modified: 26/12/2023