Probability and statistics are two related but separate academic disciplines. Statistical analysis often uses probability distributions, and the two topics are often studied together. However, probability theory contains much that is of mostly of mathematical interest and not directly relevant to statistics. Moreover, many topics in statistics are independent of probability theory.

David John Spiegelhalter OBE, FRS, (16 August 1953–) is a distinguished British statistician. In 2007 he was elected Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. Spiegelhalter is an ISI highly cited researcher and is the 34th most-cited mathematical scientist in the world over the last ten years^{[citation needed]}.

Spiegelhalter studied at the University of Oxford (Bachelor of Arts 1974) and University College London (Master of Science 1975; PhD 1978, supervised by Adrian Smith ).

Spiegelhalter was research assistant in Brunel University in 1976 and then visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, 1977–8. After his PhD, he was a research assistant for the Royal College of Physicians; he was based at the University of Nottingham, where his PhD supervisor, Adrian Smith, had been appointed a professor.

From 1981 he was at the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge. He has been an honorary lecturer at the University of Hong Kong since 1991. He has also been a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and the World Anti-Doping Agency. He played a leading role in the public inquiries into children's heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the murders by Harold Shipman. Between 2007 and 2012 he divided his work between the Statistical Laboratory (three fifths) and the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit (two fifths). He left the MRC in March 2012 and now works full time at the Statistical Laboratory.