Murders in London regularly make headlines. On a single day in July 2008, four people were murdered in separate incidents on a single day. But was this a statistical freak?

In an article originally published in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, in March 2009, David Spiegelhalter and Arthur Barnett investigate and find a predictable pattern of murder.
 
The full article is available here. Straight Statistics is grateful to the RSS for permission to reproduce this article. Further information about the society is available at membership@rss.org.uk pr www.rss.org.uk