Okay, so can you see my screen? Yes, please. So as Madhu explained, MAI is a mobile application which facilitates the quality and real-time data collection and reporting of animal disease from the fields. So the workflow is still the same. We kept what is the basis for MAI, but we decided to modify slightly the functionalities to enhance the platform as well as the data collection and the flexibility of the tool. So MAI is integrated to a platform, which is called the MPresai. We have a public website, which is now where you can access all the official information which are collected from YEs or from EIOAs and all the official information on disease events, which is translated into three languages, but we also have a private interface which is directly connected to MAI, and from which the validation flow, the acceptance and validation of the event coming in from the field can be accessed, visualized, and also analyzed in five different languages. So from these websites, we can ensure that the data are confidential and can be disclosed to the public only when the data sharing agreement is signed from the country point of view. So until now, MAI have been deployed in 17 countries over Africa, and more than 2,800 users are already enrolled in the use of MAI. We collected more than 35,000 disease events with MAI, and the event had been accepted and validated through MPresai. We already did 29 training workshops, so we will already received a lot of feedback from the countries. But with the new MAI plus, we are moving to another way of using MAI. So we are already looking at what is outside of Africa and how to use it in other settings or the countries with different type of deployment, but also different environment. So what is new as a functionality in MAI? So we speak about all the interoperability aspects. So it's an ongoing process, but we will be interoperable with DHS2 and CLAB as well as other database which are under discussion. We already have a unique identifier which is prepared for cross interaction with other official and unofficial database. So we use a construction like UNFO, the country ISO code and a unique identifier for the events. We are having two types of platform, a training environment and an official platform from which the countries and users of MAI can differentiate the environment. We are more flexible and we have an extended set of role and permission from which users can access different aspects of the platform. Even if we have a unique URL and a unique mobile application based on the user role and permission, the user can be able to process different type of information. We are able to upload photo from gallery to be, I mean to attach to the form and report symptom and lesion with visual support. And we can also export the graphical representation on the summary on statistics directly from the mobile application and share it through social media. We have a customizable form. So in the past we had only one form used by any user and at country level, but now we also have some customization possible on the internal administrative unit for example for countries which were not well represented with the Gaul and subdivision we allow team work by segmentation of the environment. So we will use wording like workspace and segments to subdivide the grouping of the user at country level but also at regional level to propose some confidentiality on information shares. We also allow the distinction between emergency and routine reports. And we have an extending set of reports and analysis through dashboards. So this is the summary on the extension of MI and now I will go through some presentation and video to show you how it's possible. So MI is only made for Android so you can directly download through Google Play the mobile application and you can already switch the workspace and segment to access to specific events which are part of the teamwork that we propose. I will explain a bit later what is the meaning for workspace and segment. So the five different languages directly available within the application and based on the user role and permission you can access to different functionality within the mobile application to proceed to the acceptance validation also directly into the mobile application, but also to review what had been commented when you submitted for example on events. So comments are coming from the management team who could request for example additional information which were not present in the form or in the report that you submitted. So you can already see that there is also a different looking for the training mode. So it's a yellow version of the official MI plus. So here you can see some report and analysis available directly within the mobile application. All these graphical representation are also directly available into imprecise the platform from which you can accept and validate. You can share the information directly from the mobile application by sharing a link to the dashboard that you want to share or by exporting PDF or images of the dashboard that you created. So I was speaking about customizable form. So here for example you can see the page from which you can define if you decide to access to this customization. You will see that you have a switch button for emergency reports. They will be seen in a different way in the application as well as on the platform. You have the internal administrative subdivision that you can customize so you can create your own subdivision and you can select the item directly within the application. We are still taking the GPS coordinate from which we can also extract all the type of administrative unit and subdivision. The onset data and observation date are available as well as another type of date, which is the reporting date, the date from which the report has been shared with the hierarchy and the surveillance system. So based on this distinction, emergency or not, you will see that the overview of the report will be seen differently. And you will see as well this question mark on the top of the status of the event, as well as the red background directly on M-Presaille as well. So when an acceptor want to accept an event, he will see a red flag on the event. So from the complexity of the grouping of the user of M-I on the field, as well as in the acceptance and validation team, we will be able to aggregate the event reported as well as the type of disease reported and the number of animal affected based on this subdivision. So here an example from which you can see that the country has been subdivided into five team working at based on the regional subdivision and accepted and validated events reported from this subdivision, the administrative subdivision are grouped in a specific color code. So you will be able to know in a more specific way from where the disease has been reported and how many events have been reported to administrative units. We are also working on the idea of providing the access to the glues template of disease reports or disease events reported across various extent of areas, directly to countries. So you will have an access to the country border, the country extents with what has been developed by glues and based on the role and permission provided to users and the confidentiality of what they want to share. You will have the event filtered directly on the map. So in the past, the old fashioned of MAI were providing two types of setup. So you could deploy the DVO one flow or the DVO two flow. So based on this, you had three or four different type of user who could participate to the reporting process. So from this old fashioned way of doing, it was more linear and the information was shared only after validation of the event at a national level. So with a new flow of MAI, I mean you can still report the event in the same linear way. So following the surveillance system, but we have an extended set of user role and type of user. We propose up to three reporters from the fields. So following the DVO one and the DVO two ID, we have now up to three different people or group of people who can reports from the fields. We have up to two acceptance level as well as validation level. We propose as well a role of viewer and publisher to allow the user of other workspace and segment to share the information or view the information, for example, at a border level. So now it's important to understand what is a segment or a workspace. So actually it's two levels of grouping of the user that can allow a privacy and provide data sharing agreement amongst the user. So for example, if you are part of a district or a region, you want to know what is within your district or region, but you would also appreciate to know what is reported at the border of your administrative unit because you can also have access to some forming system or or or health that can cross the border and you want to know what is happening in the vicinity of your administrative unit. So you are not involved in the reporting process of the other administrative unit but but you are you are you can receive the the right of viewing the information after acceptance or validation. So so we propose this access at different level it can be from submission or from the acceptance or from the validation. So it's fully customizable. So it could be a segment based on the region or districts and a workspace, for example, based on the sector if you are working as a veterinary within the public sector or the private sector. You can deploy to separate workspace if you want to work on your own without sharing the information before acceptance for example, but you could also work all together in the same workspace. So this is something that we will need to discuss before to deploy the new system with countries. So this flexibility a little better control on the visibility the data sharing agreements and the surveillance across the sectors. So any request from from the country can be customized and and we already have five different scenario available. And more can be deployed or customized based on the country request. The role and permission are very important to know before to deploy the new new system, because it will be the core of the structure of what you can, you can see what you can access, and not only what you can report. So each segment can can have up to seven type of user from now. So user can report in a specific segment and be informed about what is happening in the surrounding areas, meaning that you can also have some surveillance system between wildlife and and and the public veterinary sectors with an easier way of deployment. So here an example of of Ghana and the surveillance system already deployed you can see that we can propose for example to have the three type of reporter from the community level to the regional level. We can for example propose to have to to acceptance level and to validation level to to remain flexible and follow the structure of the surveillance system. And we could also propose the viewer role after acceptance or validation based on the interest of the stakeholder, which also involved in the surveillance process. So I was explaining that we already have five different type of scenario already known and that we can propose in a in a very fast way, but more can be also discussed. We already deployed three type of scenario, but more or less all of the different scenario deployed or using the two different layers of workspace and segments. I will now start with more visual presentation about how and precise looks like and also how the workflow is working with with short video. So we have an administrative and administration section that we can also propose to deploy at country level. So for now, doing it ourselves from a quarter. So we propose the setup we define the workspace segment and we enter the user in the system. But we can also share the admin, the admin role with a master user at country level, who can also handle himself or by himself the user role and the and the permission attached to each of the user segment and workspace. Here for example, you can see that we have a country or from a quarter we manage many workspace and some workspace or segmented but on a regional subdivision. And we can also provide the user role to a specific user for his access to more than one segment. So we have two type of environment within the impress private platform so there is a training mode and the official modes. So based on this you can also manage the user the user and enrolled in the surveillance system. They're already enrolled in the in the reporting flow or if you are starting cascade training of MAI, you can manage the user and you can handle them from the same platform based on the their evolution using this training mode. When they are ready to start reporting they master the use of MAI and impress a they can be directly migrated to the official version. So we have here for example in red the emergency reports in white it was routine reports and you can also have this bubble on the right of the screenshots, which is the the color code for the segmentation that you applied in the workspace. So MAI is is shared by your notification so you are invited to to be enrolled in the in the use of MAI and impress I through a notification email from which you can access directly to impress I an MAI and you can download MAI and you can access to the URL of impress I to start using it. And now I want I would like to demonstrate you a use case. So we decided to to set up an environment from which we have three separate workspace applied in three different countries. So we have three other more segmented, but we provided the access to some of the user in some segments to the workspace of another country, because they would like to deploy a surveillance system or for example, for example, and there is a risk of importation of alien influenza in another country, bas on commercial activities, for example, or bas on the travel of my migratory birds. And so I have 10 short videos showing the the process of reporting an event in to go that will be shared with some users in in Ghana and and and Gambia. So here the video of a reporter reporting from the fields and sending an event. So you can directly access to to MAI, you can log in using your, your, your credential. Here it's a training mode because we are not reporting a real events, and we access to the site, the workspace of to go and the segment from which the event is reported. And the user will open a form and enter the information from an application which is customized so you have the emergency report and has done in the past you can just enter the information from the diagnosis source you can provide some comments. You can provide the locality name, the latitude and longitude will be modified to be reported from a location in in to go for the reporter provides the onset state and the observation dates as well as the relevant information on the suspected source of infection. And then the surveillance system that's reported events. So we are also here having another functionality which is the sets button. So when you enter the information. It's a bit fast but when you enter an information you can also set the default value to zero or in a based on the knowledge that you have from the field if it's a true zero or if you don't have the information you can now provide this distinction. The sample is taken on the chicken which is suspected of being infected of Newcastle by Newcastle disease and the event is sent as usual. So when the event is properly sent you receive a notification and you can access to the folder which is called sent events from which you can view the event overview of the events. The, sorry, starting again. So from the moment the event is is is sent. The user will receive a notification in directly in this in his email address with an action notification so here is a submission of an event. There is no direct comment other than the event is submitted and you will see that this email will be slightly modified across the validation process. So from the email at acceptance level and acceptor can provide comment to the hierarchy so directly another acceptor or a validator if the event is accepted, but you can also return an event to the reporter and request for additional information. So now we are on the process of reviewing of the events so it's the first level of acceptance remember that we we set the the environment with two level of acceptance. So one is the common acceptor and the other one is is from the laboratory units. So here the first acceptor access to the information directly on his mobile application but you can also do it directly from him preside. He review the event and when he's ready and and want to accept the information. He provide a comment and can also accept the event. So the two process are available you can accept the event or you can return the event to the reporter. So after acceptance, the reporter who reported the event and the acceptor who accepted the event as well as the laboratory unit will receive the notification saying that the event is accepted. It's pending for from the for the acceptance at the laboratory unit so the confirmation of the case with with the results from the laboratory. So here the user from the lab is is logged on and preside. And he has access to the event directly in the section in which the event is pending for for acceptance. He reviewed the information and he will he will provide the the results of the the test made at the laboratory level. So he can directly access to the laboratory form and provide the type of test so it's a false false even so the information is not correct but he provide the test type. The results and he can also provide a comment saying that the event is accepted for example. So at this step, the the validation level will be aware of the acceptance of this event with the lab the the confirmation from the the laboratory units with a notification. And the the validator can can this can then access to the to the platform and implement the validation process as well. So we can log into the platform access to the workspace in which the event has been reported. And he can go directly to the accepted section. So here are connected all the info are gathered all the information, the reports, which are pending for validation. Yeah, I think the video is just repeated so so the validate the validator is just accessing the information they can validate. And then the notification will be shared at national level with all the user of the application in enrolled in the segment and in the workspace if we are sharing the information at the broader scale. So you can access to the notification in your mailbox and you can review the comment and and and be aware about the event. So you can at any moment also access to the event near me functionality from which you will see what has been reported within your workspace segment but also in the location in which you have the access rights about a specific disease for example. So based on this, the dashboard available in MAI and then precise will grow and you will, you will receive the, the, the aggregation of the information for, for example, here the number of event per month in a specific workspace and segments, based on the status of the report if it's pending for acceptance if it's returned accepted or validated. You can also decide to visualize only validated even for example, you can also see the number of reports per disease. So the type of disease reported in a specific workspace and segments. You have an overview of the percentage of events based on the type of event if it's multi hosts, for example, or the which type of animal had been affected by the events. You can access to some maps on the density of reports in a specific location and you have the percentage of events which which are confirmed or suspected or denied in specific workspace and segment as well.


In the introduction we mentioned that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala had described Rasulullah and the Holy Quran to carry the greatest of characteristics and merits that any of his creations carried. But when we come to the books of history and hadith and narratives of some of the Muslims we find the opposite. So is this the Sunnah and the tradition of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi? Or is it the tradition and the Sunnah of those who aimed at the roots and the foundation of this great religion and aimed at the roots of Islam? For example we take the story of Abu Darda when he met with Muawiyah and he mentioned to Muawiyah after he saw him eating and drinking and golden and silver cups and plates and silverware that this was not of the tradition of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi and that Muawiyah that you are accumulating wealth from interest and this was not of the tradition of the Prophet peace be upon him and the teachings of Allah s.w.t. The response from Muawiyah was that I don't see any harm in these two actions me eating and drinking and golden and silverware and me taking interest from people to accumulate wealth. So is this the tradition of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi and Sunnah of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi or the tradition and Sunnah of those who aimed at the roots of Islam this great religion and the traditions of Al-Buhiqi it is mentioned that one year the Muslims at the time of the ruling of Usman the Muslims were in Mina at the time of Hajj and at the time of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi Rasulullah would pray two units of prayers which is called Qasr but Usman at the time of his ruling he prayed four units in congregation with the Muslims Al-Buhiqi mentions that Usman became ill one day so the Muslims requested from Ali ibn Abi Talib Amir al-Mu'mineen alayhi wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to lead them in congregational prayer Amir al-Mu'mineen alayhi wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam ask them would you want me to lead you in a prayer of congregation that is similar to the congregational prayer that my beloved cousin and Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi would lead in the city of Mina which were two units two rakaz or you would like it to be otherwise they all raise their voice that no we want the prayers of the Khalifa or the ruler of their time meaning Usman ibn Affan and Amir al-Mu'mineen alayhi wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Ali ibn Abi Talib immediately declined their request and told them that you must pardon me I cannot take I cannot participate in such an act with you and he left them it is mentioned in Sahih Muslim by Ibn Abbas that at the time of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi when a person would commit a divorce even if he said to his wife that divorce would only fall once so meaning even if he mentioned it three times in a row it would not be three different divorces for his wife to become haram on him until someone else marries her but muslim says narrating from Ibn Abbas that at the time of the ruling of Umar that he changed this law his justification was that if a person is saying the divorce three times he must be in a hurry so if he is in a hurry we should count them as three times and since that day brothers and sisters in most schools of thought besides the Ja'fari school of thought if one were to divorce his wife and to repeat the term anti-italic three times would only be one divorce but in other schools of thought since the day the Umar justified this act and innovation if other Muslims were to mention this three times repeatedly their wives become haram upon them permanently until someone else marries them when it comes to the call of prayers adhan when a muslim man raises his voice and the call for prayers for his brethren to gather for congregational prayers or for them to know that the time of salat and prayers has come an innovation occurred by the name of tathweeb or categorized under the name of tathweeb which is by calling upon the muslims that prayers are greater than one's sleep or is greater than one sleeping and this occurred at the time of the ruling of Umar ibn al-Khattab several narratives from Islamic heritage and hadiths exist containing this story or several different stories that are very similar to one another that one day he entered the masjid and he saw or witnessed the muaddin the person who calls the muslims to the times of prayer that he was sleeping so he commanded him to wake up and to raise his voice and tathweeb to mention in his adhan as salat khayrum min annam and in the hadith that saad ibn al-qard the muaddin of umar was the first muaddin to raise his voice in tathweeb during the call of prayers and that bilal the muaddin of rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alih did not accept for him to raise his voice and the call of prayers and the way that umar commanded him to do so so here we witness another innovation that did not take place in the life of rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alih meaning that was not of the sunnah of rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alih nor of his tradition now our dear viewers how did this confusion occur what started all this confusion or what erupted all these innovations amongst the muslims i can recall several stories historical events for example al-jahil says that one day al-hajjaj gives a sermon in the masjid of kufa and he starts to remember those who visit the grave of rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alih or make pilgrimage to the city of madina he states in his sermon that god curse those who visit the grave of rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alih in the city of madina those who visit sticks and stones he does not mention that these people are going to visit their prophets the prophet of islam muhammad ibn abdillah sallallahu alayhi wa alih he says that they're visiting sticks and stones on the other hand in his sermon he says why don't these people visit the palace the palace of their khalifa let's see the comparison he curses those who visit our beloved prophet and he says they are visiting sticks and stones but if they visit abdel melik bin marwan their khalifa then they have sought nearness to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and at the end of his sermon he says and states don't they know that the khalifa of the man is greater than the messenger that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent to them one's khalifa like abdel melik bin marwan is greater than rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alih in the heritage of some muslims by the words of al-hajjaj ibn yusuf al-thakfi in another tradition by al-khaled al-qasri this narrative states that he mentions and swears by his lord he swears by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that one's khalifa is greater than all the messengers of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that he sent upon mankind for guidance to guide mankind to have them walk upon the straight path messengers like jesus moses abraham noah and muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa alih that one's khalifa is greater than all the messengers Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent upon the sons of adam for guidance in the book of tahdeeb tarikh demesh states that al-hajjaj would mention to all those around him to the muslims who saw him as a person in the position of power as a person in the position of legitimacy that Allah subhanahu never stopped revelation never stopped revelation upon the rulers of bani umayyah now brothers and sisters we must ask ourselves if these hadiths exist and the books of the muslims are these the traditions of rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa alih or the tradition of people like khalid al-qasri people like al-hajjaj ibn yusuf fithakafi so whom do we take our religion from some of these hadiths some of these narratives are in the most authentic books of the muslims books as we mentioned that come directly after the quran as genuine as the quran seen in the eyes of some muslims and when it comes to islamic tradition and hadith of some muslims not only the position of prophecy or prophethood or the position of the messengers of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala had significance or respect but even when it comes to the ka'bah the house of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that millions and millions of muslims make pilgrimage towards have no significance they have no respect for the house of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when we read the history and the heritage of some muslims when it comes to when it comes to the ka'bah when it comes to maqam ibrahim alayhi salam when it comes to the water of zamzam we see to these rulers of bani umayyah or bani abbas these unjustful rulers that placed themselves on the necks of the muslims to rule over them just for power neither the ka'bah or ma zamzam the water of zamzam or maqam ibrahim had any significance nor they showed any respect to these places that millions and millions of muslims see them to be holy in the book of al-aghani again khaled al-qasri says that if my amir abdel malik bin marwan commanded me to destroy the ka'bah brick by brick i would do so and if my amir his amir abdel malik bin marwan commanded me to take the ka'bah brick by brick to the city of sham demascus today i would obey his command and i would destroy the ka'bah and take it all the way to demascus brothers and sisters we see the situation of the muslims those who ruled over the muslims this was their respect towards what we see as holy the house of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala they're willing to destroy the ka'bah the house of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala just because their amirs ordered them to do so so we must realize that at the time of the rulers or the khulafa it's not what we think or what we are told as it happened thus we need to clarify history and the tradition of rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa alaih what occurred in his lifetime what occurred after his lifetime brothers and sisters muslims came to a point that a person like hudayf ebnel yamam a commander of the muslims one of the leading commanders that were in charge of bringing bilad faris the land of perjah into islam says that i feared my prayers in public i would not make my sa'a in public that muslims were in a situation in a time era that every single one of them feared to make their prayers to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in public and we had to conduct our prayers in secrecy or privacy this is hudayf ebnel yamam one of the greatest companions of rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa alaih saying this so how about when it came to the average muslim who was not a general of the muslim military or the muslim army when it came to the average muslim how do you think they lived what kind of persecutions they lived under now our dear viewers after hearing and witnessing such events and historical occasions within the muslim history islamic history we see that we cannot rely on all sources that are represented to us we must filter islamic heritage islamic history what took place what is true what is false of course what i present is not for myself will present the sources of every single hadith and occasion or story mentioned on this show our dear viewers join us on this program in which we will try to illustrate the most authentic of events and most authentic history that took part in the life of rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa alaih before islam before his message during his life and after his departure this is all for today's episode join us in the next episode of the master of messengers sallallahu alaihi wa sallam


Hello and welcome to Pukipondas, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is, why do children need to feel they belong and how can adults support? And I'm in conversation with Sarah Dove. Hello, my name is Sarah Dove and I've been asked to describe myself, which is always a little bit chaotic. I've worked in education, I think for 18, 19, 20 years, something like that. And specialised in working with children at risk of exclusion. And I use that term very broadly, so not necessarily children at risk of permanent exclusion, but children that might be isolated from the education system for a whole range of reasons, such as health reasons. Sometimes it might be children that can't go to school, don't want to go to school for lots of different reasons as well. And I've been working in the sector for a long time, I really enjoy it. And if I'm going to describe myself, I think it'll be unfair to not mention that I'm a deep cat lover. And I'm just really interested in human nature, what people do and why they do it, and I really enjoy working with children. So yeah, that's me. That's you in a nutshell. I love it. And yeah, cat lover, we also have those who are listening. Mark is sitting on my lap joining in with the conversation. As always, anyone who's been to like any webinar or conference I've spoken at for about 18 months has met Mark. And so the question for today is why do children need to feel they belong and how can adults support. So that's our jumping off point. I've got a feeling we're going to go everywhere. But do you want to make a first stab at answering that massive question? Yeah, I like the fact that you tried to really easy question. That's fine. That's really helpful. So I think why the children need to feel like they belong. I think it is part of human nature. I think it is no different to adults wanting to feel like they belong to some type of group and being part of a community of some description or another. Whether or not that's their family, their friends or people they might meet in less than slubrous situations. I think for me, belonging encapsulates ideas about freedom and safety to express your identity and who you are in a way that's comfortable and nurturing. And if we looked at the idea of kind of human nature in particular, obviously I have to talk about Maslow, not like I'm paid to. But as Maslow's argument around the feelings of belongingness as being a central kind of tenant of human nature is key. And I think predominantly it's about being confident that you fit in and to be safe on who you are. And I think children are no different from adults in that way. And they might explore that concept of belongingness in different ways that adults might do. But their feelings of belongingness still kind of exist. And I think essentially we're, you know, we spoke about cats, didn't we? And cats aren't necessarily pack animals, but I think humans are. Humans like to have that feeling of being part of something bigger. And you do a lot of work now. And maybe you want to talk a bit more about your role here, but in alternative provision. And I think that's why I picked up on this idea of belonging, really, because I love alternative provision and people are far away. And it's in all those places that children and young people go when actually it feels like maybe they're not belonging anymore somewhere else. And the environment that you have to create there in order to try and help often kind of rebuild kids in quite a basic way and make them feel wanted. I don't know. I guess that's why this was the thing I wanted to pick up with you. But would you be happy to talk a little bit about that and about your, yeah, working in AP? Yeah. So predominantly because of the work is work with children at risk of exclusion. I've mainly worked in pupil fair units and alternative provisions. And this idea of belongingness became really key to me when I was researching for my PhD. And in that PhD, I spent I think six months in an alternative provision in one of the home counties and part of that was focus group meetings. It was in-depth interviews with children as well as participant observation. And one of the key features of that research was their feelings of belongingness in the alternative provision. And there was a kind of natural dichotomy with how they didn't feel like they belonged in mainstream. And we kind of explored that together about what does belongingness mean to you. And the children, they spoke about ideas about, again, about some children really strong that the AP alternative provision was like family. So they described, for example, teachers, she's like a mum to me was one of the things they spoke about. It was very sweet. And they spoke about those kind of regular routines that you have where you eat a meal together at lunchtime and like part of the family. And not all children felt strongly like that in terms of alternative provision, but they all named it as a community. And then kind of set in contrast to that where those bigger environments around mainstream where they didn't feel like they belonged. And so one child, for example, who told me that she had dyslexia, she spoke about the idea of being made to read out in front of other children and how that made her feel essentially exposed. And she used a phrase, but I'm not necessarily going to use in this context, but it's very derogatory for people with learning difficulties. And she says she was made to feel that way. And that she didn't feel like she was part of the school. And that was a kind of routine conversation of those children who had a way called self excluded. They might not have been permanently excluded, but stopped attending for emotionally based school refusal, for example, they might have electively home educate before they kind of appeared back in the admissions criteria. So those ideas of belonging were really key. And I wrote an article a while ago now, I think about three years ago, probably two years ago, the schools week and talking about. So often people castigate alternative provision improves as being these environments where children go who are poorly behaved, naughty, and often speaking about the kind of. It's the end for those children and I spoke about actually for some children is to start it's, it's the start of something new and for a lot of them is because they feel part of a community. You have to get that community right what you don't want is a community where, you know, behavior which is not conducive to society is encouraged or there aren't high aspirations or high expectations. But I strongly believe that good AP can really change children's lives, but also families lives who also may have had really poor relationships with schools for whatever reason. I went off on a massive tangent then. But the research was, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what question you asked to be honest. Sarah talks passionately about AP is the heading. Yeah, I did it. I thought that's my favourite role because I think the children have potentially been let down. Yeah. And I'm not saying let down by school or by family or necessarily by local authority or by anything, but by kind of mashing together of not kind of really understanding a child's needs or policies and processes which restrict the child's opportunities rather than seeing AP as part of a continuum of education and not and not every child will thrive in massive mainstream schools because they are bigger. Like the move from primary to secondary is huge for some of our children, especially autistic girls, for example, really hard for them. And how do we support when a child has found a sense of belonging? Like I'm thinking in particular, so if you've got that kind of more therapeutic nurturing environment that we often find in alternative provision, or perhaps you've got children who are really settled in a smaller, very community focused primary school and then they're going off to big school. How do we support them to kind of continue to thrive when they go elsewhere? I think it's hard and I think that's the kind of key moment between year six and year seven. And as a mum of a child who's just moving from year six to year seven during a pandemic and I was really mindful of that. She was in a one-form entry school. Transition is difficult. I think you need to start with trying to understand where the child is at wherever that might be and what things that they have found helpful from that small community group setting you know, rural setting, for example, and how can you, how can you mirror some of those aspects whilst also holding those high aspirations. So moving from one-form entry to a four-form entry, I think it has to be understanding that's really difficult. And sometimes transitions need to be slow. I don't think you can under, I don't think you can mitigate the importance of relationships about having that kind of key person they can contact. But also I find that some children find it difficult to ask for help, that they may not say that they need help. They might be, they might internalize it and actually rather keep quiet rather than saying actually I'm finding things really difficult. So almost having that permission of this is the person you talk to if things feel difficult or if you're lost, this is where you go. I know one school at the moment is using, I think, some additional funding and I'm sure there's many others about supporting that year six, the year seven transition for a week where no other children are at the school environment.  So they get to kind of experience it in a safer way that's a bit more kind of tailored for them. But I think in answer to your question, there is no magic bullet, I think, to support children. And so I produced a resource, it's just free on the website, a transition resource where I spoke to parents and carers and educationists around what did they find helpful for all transition and try to pull those things in together. And a librarian got involved, which was really interesting and spoke about libraries as a safe place. Yes. Because they're quiet and look, we're both surrounded by books. And it's that safe place where you can kind of immerse yourself, but they're quiet. They're often that restricted use, but, you know, they're not kind of like a classroom that is more open. You might only be allowed to go at certain points and that can be quite freeing. So. And there's rules, though. I always loved that. And I found this quite often when I've spoken to other autistic women in particular who got diagnosed later, but just basically spent the whole of school going, ah, often the library. You knew how it works. And usually there was a librarian there who was, you know, kind of similar to, and yeah, you knew what the rules were. It's a really safe place and often a really safe person as well. Exactly. She said there's there's very specific rules. So my daughter used to love libraries. Obviously, we haven't kind of enjoyed them for the last few years. And when she went into her new school, she was because of COVID, she couldn't do it, but being a library helper. Because there's particular rules you take books out. They're given at this time. And if you don't give them back at that time, then there's a fine and all those kind of very kind of rigid rules that she gets. And I think so even like breaking of rules can be quite difficult for autistic girls, I think. And where they don't know when to break them, when it's okay to break them. So one thing I keep on saying to my daughter is because she doesn't have a bedtime now because it's no school, what time can I stay awake till? Whatever you want. What? And I think she'd rather have that kind of actually know you need to be in bed by 10. She'd rather have that argument about the time than to not have a time. Which that's really interesting, actually. And I have to say in our house, my daughters are 11, they're just finished year six. And yeah, likewise, it's the holiday. But yeah, I think I just moved my time on and gave them a new rule. But yeah, they're comfortable with that. But I think it is interesting, isn't it? Yeah, I'm all about the rules. You talked a little bit there about how the relationship maybe is a key thing there, which feels like a very good radio two-styling link to your wonderful book. So you kindly sent me a copy recently of your book about behavior. But it's different than many books on behavior. It's different than all books on behavior, but different in that it is very much about this kind of relationship and nurturing kind of approach. And I wondered if you'd be happy to talk a little bit about why, why you wrote it and why you thought this was an important kind of contribution to making what difference you hope it might make. Why I wrote it is, you know, very basically someone asked me to, which sounds because I don't think I would ever thought that I would ever be in a position in which anyone would want to hear what I had to say really. And when I was growing up, going into home was a very unsafe place. I'll speak about it as the other incredibly unsafe space. It was violent. It was traumatic.  The school was my safe place. And I speak about sort of right at the beginning about why I wrote the book. And I remember, I'd already sorted out my apprenticeship to be a hairdresser, which is ironic because I'm not actually that bothered about hair. So I'm glad I didn't go down that route. And I got my GCSEs and I did all right. And I went to go and speak to new head of sixth form. And I think it's relevant. He knew because he had no expectation of me because I was not really naughty. But I was like I had like six inch spikes and stuff like that was kind of happy to not be at school. And he I asked if I could stay in the sixth form. He said absolutely. And I still speak to Mr. Brian and still talk about him obviously. And he's a great teacher. It was the belief in my ability. I think it was really powerful. And I could have easily been a few of those children in those book in the books I talk about. And I think one of the reasons I spoke about it is that when I was becoming a teacher and when I was a teacher, there was no book that I could pick up and go. What can I do in this circumstance? What can I do to really help what's going on within the classroom setting? And being a teacher is really incredibly hard because you're faced with 30 kids that may or may not care what you're teaching about, may not care about what you're saying or what you're doing. And how do you approach that? But in that class authority, the grants have children that are really struggling and they're not struggling because of you and your lessons not entertaining or you're not, you know, funny enough and all those kind of cliches. They're struggling because actually things are really hard for them. And I get that as well. And I remember trashing an art room when I must have been, must have been about nine or 10, trashed an art room. And actually I could quite easily been excluded from that. And it was because like so much was happening. And the art teacher just gave me like a pen and paper and I never spoke about it again. So there was those kind of aspects around, I wanted teachers to be able to have something that they could utilize and use. And so to that end, I wrote the book. And when I spoke to you briefly, like how do I feel about the book? I can't read it. I find it like I can't read it from beginning to end, because I still can't believe that anyone has asked me to publish a book. That's crazy. Also because the stories of all the children are true.  And it's sad in the past and some of them may still be in distress and we still have children in distress. So if I can minimize that distress in any way, I will. And I should be writing a proposal for the second book about working together beyond the classroom. How do we work within a kind of multi-agency kind of aspect? Because schools are just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. Can we talk for a moment about imposter syndrome? Because I find it like mind boggling that you would say that you were surprised that anyone would want you to write a book or that anyone might want to read it. When I know you only, like since you've been a fully formed adult who has a huge amount of experience and wonderful, very practical ideas always to share. And I can't like I'm surprised you hadn't written before. I can almost have the opposite surprise if you're surprised if that makes sense. So why is that? Why the uncertainty about your? I suppose like, oh, I suppose that's complex. It's a complex question. Isn't it kind of imposter syndrome anyway? I think I'm the first person in my family to go on to finish school successfully. So not even get GCSEs or A levels, but just to finish school successfully. And some people might be following my younger brother's story, Warren, who's been released from prison last year and he's going to London School of Economics. And he's such a clever young man. I was going to call him boy. He's not a boy. He's a man, isn't he? Such clever. And he had obviously those feelings of how can I do this? Like, and he's going to London School of Economics to study sociology and have a year out of prison. So I think for me, because of a series of kind of being told that you're, you're not good enough and that and kind of living on that kind of that arousal level of fear for many, many, many years. I think does have a kind of fundamental impact upon how you see yourself. But also I think because I've had significant mental health issues. And that makes you question yourself, I think generally. So which is weird, actually, because I've had OCD and OCD gives you this magical power where you can like save people's lives, doesn't it? Which obviously I'm not very good at because I don't have magical power. So it's almost like the like trying to create kind of a resource to be better than you are. And I just think it's just, I don't know, like I just think it's just a process and I think having Tourette's syndrome as well. Like one of the things I talk about is I used to pride myself and my ability to be very exact about what I say. And then my Tourette's got worse after the birth of my daughter.  And I was also very overweight. I was eight stone bigger. And so I think all of those kind of factors kind of makes, oh, why would anyone want to employ me? And then I listen, this sounds terrible. And then I listen to some people speak like famous people that may be in governments and politics. And I think, oh my goodness, I'm probably all right. Yeah, I have to say there's nothing, yeah, that kind of helps to, because I always find it interesting for you, because actually there's a lot about our journeys that are quite similar, albeit it's exhibited in slightly different ways. But I have the, yeah, there's very similar feelings around imposter syndrome. However, I also have that similar thing of going and seeing other people speak sometimes. And it can be a bit like empress in new clothes, like there's someone in particular who I have seen speak more than once, who is published and everyone always raves about this person. And I've always come away really nonplussed and not understanding it at all. And even when I've been in the same room as all the other people and all the other people have gone on about how wonderful this guy is. And I'm like, I don't, I don't get it at all. I find that helps a little bit. I don't mean it's like, I have to say it's mainly kind of people that I will never meet and being on TV. So there's no one that you know. Don't worry, Ed, you Twitter, it's fine. It's not like someone did that. But also you like, I find that you learn so much from people as well when you listen to them.  But also seeing other people's enthusiasm and encouragement for people that may not be perfect is really profound, I think. And that can really help. But I also made a decision. And it was when my daughter was four. It was quite a while ago now because she's coming up to 12. And it wasn't going to let my Tourette's stop me. And part of that was that my daughter and I went travelling together. We went to Romania together when she was four years old, just us two. We were picking away at the airport and we loved it from beginning to end. And then that was part of the I'm not letting Tourette's stop me do anything.  But actually I still have stuff I can offer and I'm not perfect. And I think that's okay as well.  This is not the panacea. You won't pick up this book and go, oh, everything is really meaningful. I mean, you might and that's great. Please write a review if you do. Generally speaking, it's about like collecting ideas and approaches. There is no one science fits all and not everyone is going to find me amazing if they hear me speak. But like, but equally not everyone's going to find me awful when I speak. I think it's really important though that kind of authenticity that you bring in like bringing your whole self to your work because I do think that there's not necessarily a lot of people who have the kind of experience that you have had growing up or that are living with, you know, like living with threats and managing that and OCD. You know, these things I do think I, yeah, it can be really worrying about whether this will undermine your credibility and it can make you fearful of being in this world. However, when you're able to stand up and give of your best self, then I think that is such important role modeling, even if sometimes it might be imperfect or messy, especially almost if it's sometimes a little, you know, a little messy. You're, you're expecting identical twins at the moment. Very excitingly. I can't like not address this in the in the podcast. I can't have you here and not talk to you about this. I guess it made me wonder a little bit like, what is your hope in terms of obviously your daughter's a little bit older and there's a bit of a gap there. Do you think the world has changed like and by the time your twins arrive, what kind of, you know, what do you hope might have moved on even just a little bit in terms of what their experience might be of the world and school and stuff. Such a good question. And actually, I think so interestingly enough, I've gone back into kind of maternity care and things like that. And I've gone, oh, not enough has changed. Not really. Yeah, yeah, really, I get really grumpy about certain things. And I was asked the other day, because this is what I tell everyone and actually we spoke about beforehand, I've got a shared placenta, which means all the babies have a shared placenta. I don't have any placenta belonging to me, my babies do, which means you have to have additional scans because there's several different kind of particular things that can go wrong with that. So the sonographer asked me, like, do you know what the implications of that were? And I said, yeah, he said, what are they? And I said, this, this and this. And he said, are you a little bit autistic? And I said, you can't be a little bit autistic. And I said, well, why did you ask that? And he said, because you seem to know quite a lot about it. And I said, because it's happening to my bodies and my babies. And there's that kind of bit about a woman knowing her place in the medical discourse that sadly seems to still exist. So there's those. So has things changed for my daughters? And what do I hope, especially around education? I think the biggest thing for my daughter, my oldest daughter, my only daughter at the moment, technically, is I think she felt, I think she feels incredibly lonely. May or may not be because she's an only child, she's got friends, but her internalization is that she feels lonely and she feels different. But it was interesting about twins. I think that is very unlikely to occur. And that's quite exciting in a way. Also it's unlikely to occur because they will have a big sister, even if there was just one of them, they'll have a big sister, which I think will help with that kind of loneliness. I also think in terms of education, so I was really struggled with different things around school, around that kind of, you know, she has an anxiety disorder and so on. She's really, really struggled. I don't want that for the twins. I don't know if that will occur, because I think there's often lots of blame on the parent about it as well. In other words, if I've made that occur, like, no, because it's attachment, because I'm, you know, it's like, no, it's not. It's just like how she is, about how she interprets the world. And I think mothers of autistic children often get that anyway. They get a lot of kind of blame about parenting. I think there's a refrigerator mother thing, wasn't it, about cold? Yeah, which I was thinking about the other day. I don't think enough has changed. And actually, I think in some ways we've gone backwards around inclusive education. And that worries me. Whilst I, you know, I sing the praises of AP and crew, I think that schools should also have the mechanism to be able to support children with a wide range of diversity. And I don't think it's about economics. I don't think it's about budgeting or money, because so much goes into special educational needs to fight parental choice. I think it's often a lack of belief in parents' experiences and a lack of trust about parents and what they're reporting. And that's why I want to write the next book working together, because I think there's, yeah, I don't think there has been enough change. And I think where the changes occurred, it's not one I'm necessarily particularly excited about for my children. So yeah, it's a bit negative, isn't it? I've just like thrown my children into like a dystopian educational universe. And all that depressing. Anyway, I think it's, yeah, it's a really difficult thing, isn't it?  And I don't think any of us can quite predict what's going to kind of happen next. I kind of, there's a little part of me that feels a bit hopeful about some of the changes that we've seen as a result of the pandemic that maybe might mean that, you know, are the world changes, but I'm not sure. I think going back to your point there about the twins never feeling lonely, it just really made me think of my daughters. So my daughters are both in the same year at school, they're actually second cousins by birth, but have been raised like twins. And the really interesting thing for us has been that they're such a unit and they're such close friends and so important to each other. That it has meant, you know, things like Lyra's only had her autism diagnosis really recently age 11, despite the fact that I specialize in this, because they're always together. And she's never like displayed a lot of the typical things you might expect because Ellie is the social glue and so Lyra's not seemed to have any of the issues we might have expected. And it's only when we'd split them that we began to see those issues. And likewise, Ellie struggles significantly with the academic side of things. But again, until they were apart, we didn't realize because Lyra would sit next to her and help her and they're such a great unit. And it's when I reflect on it, it makes me feel guilty as a parent for not realizing the individual challenges they have. But on the other hand, looking at them and thinking what an awesome pair they are. Absolutely, they each have each other all the time and they can fight like cat and dog, but they're so important to each other. And that's been for us a really interesting thing of the pandemic because they actually chose to be apart. And then during the course of the pandemic spent so much time together and actually went through almost like a regressional stage where they would like would often sleep in the same bed and that kind of thing. And then decided they absolutely wanted to be together and have asked to be in the same form group in the same school and everything when they go to secondary which. And there's something as, yeah, and I guess you'll find this with your twins that there's something as a mum that's really lovely about that they've made that decision. You know, I when they're very little and there is that temptation always wants to do things together but they kind of found found their own ways and kind of gone apart and always come back together which I think is. This is really important so people ask me a lot are you going to dress them identically and I'm like no one because I'm never going to be able to tell them apart anyway. Give myself extra work here but also they are their own humans and you know I probably have just one set of clothes initially and then just swap them over because that's fine but I don't want to the same. But yeah I'm not going to recognize them anyway but the idea of them being together but yeah so being safe and secure apart again is really important but I hear what you say about the mother's guilt the mother's guilt is huge it doesn't matter what you do. Whether or not you found it whether or not you kind of identified it really early you'd be told that and you're a parent that you know is too involved with your children's lives. See it late and then you blame yourself anyway. So it doesn't really matter what you do and we're going to feel guilty. You're right. That's the thing I think I've kind of started I think because I had significant mental health health issues when I was born that I've now come to a place going because we made to feel guilty for so many decisions. And some of those may have had an impact and I'm sure some of them did but also it goes back to those notions of good enough parenting you know my daughter does have a safe place where she feels like she belongs at home at least in that environment. And yeah you do the best with resources and circumstances that you have. Yeah guilt I think guilt is very much a kind of construct of parenthood I think which is sad really isn't it. Well and I think it's challenging as well like right from the moment that you are clearly pregnant people start trying to give you advice don't they and I guess you face this earlier than most would because I think you kind of you carrying twins and and yeah you definitely And when I'm vomiting outside places I'm like I'm pregnant I'm not drunk and pregnant and people when it's twins are they rather than saying congratulations they just say good luck. It's a really marked difference good luck okay. Yeah see you in three minutes. Yeah. Those are people give advice and some of it I listen to it some of it I ignore and that's you know if you go on Twitter anyway and you engage in any education educational discourse and it becomes very polarised and they like that as well everything is this or this actually there's a lot more kind of nuanced approach that needs to be taken for both of those discussions. Yeah and I get that that takes me kind of back to your book actually and I because I'd wondered about this like I have for a long time not been brave enough to really publicly have a view on behavior just because I don't like it when people hate me and and that might sound no but you know like I don't like it even when people like it's not the best position to be in is it. But when you start talking about behavior and I do actually have really strong views on it and I have started very much engaging with those views more now, but there is really polarised views on behavior and there's basically the kind of the kind of relational and kind and understanding and responding to need and supportive sort of approach and then there's the other approach and I just wondered whether you'd had any kind of backlash or difficulty following your book. So, no, surprisingly, no, none at all. And, and despite what Phil Beedle said about it which was very polarizing in terms of his opinion, and I'm a big fan of Phil Beedle because he was on TV when I was training to be a teacher so I absolutely delighted he read it. So, I walk a very particular line online and it's very intentional and the line is that you wouldn't, I don't think, be able to consider about what line that I sit in and I decided not that many years ago, not as many years ago as it should have been to not argue online. Yeah, because actually I get so invested in the arguments, I get so enraged that it's just not healthy for me. And that was after having an argument about whether or not a tortoise should wear a nappy. So, let alone about children.  And I intentionally, I mute certain words so I don't see certain words, but I would engage in conversation with people in a way that I hope is conducive and helpful. And I will present that conferences that are probably quite diverse in their opinion so I will. I've presented at Research Ed, which is run by Tom Bennett, but also lose the booths with Paul Dix. And I am because I want the voices the children I work with to be heard by all. And that's my kind of absolute positioning is that I want the voices of the children to echo beyond my own personal echo chamber whatever my kind of belief system is. And I do feel very strongly about things and if people come listen to me, they probably hear that. But actually, if you read, and I've got behind me, I've got Tom Bennett's book, I've got Paul Dix's book because there is no panacea. I've got my own book, I've got lots of books in between that take out what's helpful for you, but also don't lose your moral sight about what's healthy for children. And, and that's like, you know, I do the kids mental health chat on a Tuesday, which is well attended by psychologists, psychiatrists, parents, lots and lots of parents and teachers. And I'm very keen on making sure it's not a space that he's argumentative, it's collaborative. No, I haven't had any backlash to my face. I mean, there might be loads of kind of messages going, God, that looks rubbish. But the thing is, if they don't want to read it, they won't read it. So but no, so far, all my reviews are really nice, really nice. I'm really, I'm really pleased to hear that just that behavior can be such a, yeah, hot, hot button topic. Why does it matter to you so much that those voices are heard? That's not an accusatory question. I'm 100% on side with this, by the way, I just would love to hear about why, why? I think it's really easy to silence children's voices. My voice was pretty silent when I was younger for lots of reasons, different reasons, I wasn't able to speak out. And I don't want children to have that experience where their viewpoints aren't held. For me, it's a human rights aspect around children's rights and participation and beyond notions of being tokenistic. And those children that have spoken to me or, or I've talked or I've supported in various different ways, have, have told me something through their behavior, through what they've said. And I think that's really important that's heard. And I think because we can learn so much from children, often, you know, it's the cliches and it, you know, children are experts of their own experiences. Yeah, just like you're an expert of your own experience and so on. And sometimes people may not have ever had those kind of opportunities to hear those voices in more detail. And if it can help shift understanding to be something that is more inclusive, then I want to do that. And I don't want to close off those conversations with everyone. And actually when I listen to, you know, as I said, I don't agree with everyone. But also, is it going to be effective if I have a moan via the format of Twitter? No, I'd rather have a direct conversation with someone and actually this makes me feel really uncomfortable. And I have those conversations all the time in my day job going, I don't think that's appropriate or I'm not sure or holding people to account.  They're going to block me, they're going to mute me. Lots of people do that anyway. It's not helpful anyway. So no, no one's been horrible about my book. That's good. Clearly, because it's a really good book. I think there was well that you are quite a safety offline before we started recording. One of the things that I really like and really respect actually about the way in which you've written your book is that you don't actually say this is the way to do it. You share a wide range of experiences and say, here are some things that might help. And you're quite kind of open to the fact that different things will work for different people and that it's not all going to be plain sailing. And I think I think that is really, really important. But yeah, also hopefully less likely to evoke IRH responses. The only thing about not being controversial is that you don't earn as much money. If you're controversial, you get more people more interested in booking you for speaking and presenting and all those sorts of things or buying your book because what has she said, I don't have any of that. And that's hard as well because that kind of knowledge that my voice is maybe not loud as some people because I'm not controversial. But I've taken that deliberate line and I might revisit that line and go, oh, I'm not happy about that. It's now actually beyond the pale and I need to kind of speak up more robustly about X, Y, Z. I don't think we are there yet. I think we could be there in the future. So we've got the behavior consultation by the government at the moment. That would be interesting to see what comes out from there. But I would rather be consulted on that and write my particular views and spout a tweet that's kind of meaningless really. Yeah, I've got a lot of respect for that. And I think there's a lot to be said actually for engaging with different points of view rather than just living in an echo chamber. But as you say staying true to your morals and what's always asking the question, what's best for the children. We're coming to the end of our time, but I can't finish without asking you just to maybe explain so that people can go away and use this idea. You talk about your cornerstone of supporting children understanding behavior being around noticing, understanding and responding. And I thought that, you know, I always like to take these little bite sized bits out to share with people and that felt to me like a really powerful triad. And I wondered if you wouldn't mind just explaining a little bit about what you mean by that and how you use that in your day to day. Yeah, so I think quite often, and I've done it, I do all the time, you might notice something that's happened. And then you move straight on to responding. So you might notice, for example, that Liam is tapping his pen incessantly on his table all the time.  Liam continues because he doesn't notice or whatever. And then your response to that might then be further to, it could be a detention, it could be isolation room, it could be sending out things escalate. My idea was actually, you notice something first, then you try to understand it, then you respond. Because actually, if your response doesn't build in those concepts around understanding, then your response is meaningless because it may not kind of help or enhance the practice that's happening.  Well, that's fine. And that has a different response. But it could be just that he doesn't even notice. It could be, for example, because OCD has to do it 30 times, obviously that's like at the end of this kind of spectrum. Or it could just be that he needs something to fiddle with.  But without building in that key component of understanding, then your response is going to be at best ineffective. And it will become routineized rather than actually something about the individual child. So the idea is just notice, understand and then respond rather than kind of jumping ship, basically.


Yes, it is my pleasure to introduce Sam Chang. He's in the department, he's a distinguished professor of mathematics and statistics at San Diego State University, and also has a visiting research appointment as a mathematician at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Sam had really many visiting positions I was impressed in Canada at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Tokyo. He has filed patents, which is something we often don't do in the atmospheric sciences, but it's quite common in other scientific and technical departments. And I has, he has published three books and over 100 research papers and top journals. Sam, I'm looking very forward to your talk. Well, thank you, Judith, for your introduction. I'm not only mathematician here, we have quite a few good mathematicians here like Anish himself, Matt Chidon. So, when I learned a lot from Anish when he was at Scripps. Anish asked me to talk about some statistics tools and uncertainty, that's the title of my lecture. So, I like to discuss the following, I put statistic, putting a big data in front of statistics just try to be modernized myself. And so, where's the first topic, I will select three topics, and that's on the data delivery and data visualization and code and reproducible results. And then I will talk about correlation regression. And then for uncertainty, I like to discuss about the error estimation and such technical issues on data simulation. I like to start with Chidon's slides. I really like that. Chidon said a few keywords here that, you know, the good framework should be, he said it must be, mathematically expressed. I like that because the hand waving time is gone, so we really need to be, our field has become a quantitative field. And our results now is not just as this pattern looks like that pattern, and it would be testable against observations using scale scores. So, this, the predictions should be quantitative, and that means they're all supported by data. And so my first topic is about called four dimensional visual delivery of big climate data, we call it 4DVD. So, a DVD is a machine to play music, and a desk, and so 4DVD is a software, so DVD is hardware, 4DVD is a software. And so the interface looks like this. And I'm going to show a couple examples, and I'll give you a very quick demo. Like, for instance, one spot, and so you click on spot, this is like a San Diego area, and this is a 20th century real analysis, this model results. So you click on that spot, you can get time series, you can get time series at different levels. This all together has 24 levels for real analysis, for this 20th century real analysis data, and then you can get the time series all the way from 1851. And then you can download the data, you can compute the trend, you can do all kinds of statistical calculations with that. And then you can also look at dynamics, if you use it for dynamic analysis, for instance, you can look at the VWINCH, also from this 20th century real analysis example. And so you can see the ITCZ, and you can see HADME cells, but when you see the HADME cell, you know that the real HADME cell is not the same as what you see in the textbooks, because textbooks, those are hand waving schematic diagrams. Those are nice, but actual ones, even though it's a long time average, it's not as nice, it varies from place to place. So here, let's go to that.  So www.4dvd.org, you'll get this. You get this, and you can rotate this and see different spots, and you can see different areas. Zoom in and zoom out. So zoom in, zoom out, do all kinds of things.  For instance, like you'd say, well, just look at, for instance, like you'd say statistics summaries, think of it as a say, is minimum percentiles, 25, 50, million, 75 standard deviations, variance, skewness, and cathosis, et cetera. And so you can, you can also look at, you know, for the general public, some people may want to look at, say, some, you know, general climatology, and also you look at this is that the green is general climatology, and the red one is historical high, and then the blue one is historical low. And so this is something that is very good for the classroom teaching. And then if you like the data, you can say, I want to download the data, so the data will come to you right away, right away, no, no, no waiting time. And then you get it, you get it instantly. And so that is, and then the students can play with the data and use, or Python, or even Excel itself to play with the data. And there is histogram, et cetera, you know, this is data. Okay, so you get this, you get the time, time, and the data, and then to do a launch shoot, et cetera. And then you can, you know, if you say, I like the map, this map, and the map, it can be in different shape to, you can get a map into like, you know, you can change it to, like, just regular map, two dimensional map like this. Or you can get different color, all kinds of you can put a bottom topography, the mountain, you know, all kinds of things in the river lake. You can use options, color, you can use all kinds of colors. And so, and then you say, well, I like this data, and then you can just download the data for this map. So that is just something you like, and you can just download there.  And how can that be done so fast. Because three technologies, one is optimization for database. And one is distributed computing. And one is the fast query into the system. So we have that kind of design. So that means all this, this, what you have seen is done on your computer, not on service computer. You can make it really fast. And so, let's get back to this, this PowerPoint slides. So, and then you know this looks pretty useful tool for data visualization and delivery. We are, you know, we're continuing developing this. And we have a lot of several people working on this for many years. And we started working on this in 2012, first released in 2016. And currently we have like four people working on that. And then like putting a bit more, we want to beautify their sense, you know, like put a light mode, day mode kind of thing. Just like not school, you know, many of you have seen that one. So beautiful. And what's the difference between ours and other products, because we have data manipulation functions, we actually do it as a data machine. So a quicker version say, well, I want to use that. And I have my own data. I want to quickly use this as a tool just like use this, such as the property or error view, or those things. I want to produce a beautiful figure. And now we want to say we want to quickly you can use our machine to produce your data instead of, you know, we will mount this data for you. And we will want to have different method projections. We have, you know, this two kinds of selection, we have 300 single selections, we're going to have more selections. And we're going to do some cross sectional maps to do the diagnostics. And we want to do more space time maps to show the wave propagation. And quickly this will be useful for us to us when we look at the data. And we want collaboration with you, you know, one model collaboration is the simple one is that you have data, and we can give it for you, we realize it for you, for instance, if we have say one of the same models, and we put it for put it on for you. And other collaboration model will be like we customize our for DVD for your data set. For instance, like this is the example we did with Donata. Donata, thank you. Your presentation talked about it in this lecture. And this is the ArgoVis. So this started in 2017 when we, Donata and I put together this a statistics workshop at SIO. And then so we found there is a match here. And so we did this, this the ArgoVis machine. And so that was a master's thesis by Tyler Tucker. So he was in the, in the, in my lab. And he was interested in the Donata's data and then so they produced this wonderful tool for climate for ocean scientists. Yeah, I think Donata, you can tell me more. And then we were talking about to get a school kids to adopt ArgoVis and using this machine to say, this is my boy, a kid, and they can track where it is and what is the data look like. A person can start his kind of own, you know, web, Twitter, or this kind of things, social media, and to get the science to the, to the general community, to the general public. So there are many other products out there in the world.  So many people getting into it. And so you could see that not school, perhaps that is the one, the best known to people. So beautiful to see this. This, you know, when you see this, you know, the blocking, you can see the blocking right there. So nice. But not school cannot do data service. So, you know, they have that kind of a strength. And we do our own sense when our focus is on data delivery and then data visualization. So we actually want users to play with data. And so, so our main, you know, one of our main audience is for school kids for classroom use. And there are many others, you know, they come in the engine, Google Earth engine, et cetera, just all good stuff. And we have one right at Colorado, you know, this right read, read is Colorado product. Right. But those that read is more for scientists, a high school kid probably cannot play with it. Each one has its own use. Right. And the other tool is that we cooperate and we incorporate for DVD with a book in climate mathematics. And so, so that, you know, we have this, this data, you use the time series data, or you get to this map data. And then you say I want to replay with it. I want to have my own customization customization. So you can, you know, we provide a list of standard data analysis tools in the book. We have the Python code, and we have the R code. And that is, is this for students to use as like a reference menu, you know, for lab, you know, your lab. You can see this is this is this will be the resources from the book. So you can get a computer code, you can get the end there is a YouTube tutorial of our and Python. And also we have the data set, you can download the data set by letter CDF, and all kinds of things. And, and then you can set every figure in the book can be reproduced by a user instantly in the in classroom or when students doing homework. And so we think that this work provides a good way to train climate science students with useful mathematics we got useful mathematics. Often your way we learned mathematics in college, often our math professors told us math is so beautiful, and then tell you that math is useful, but the professor will never tell you a useful mathematics example. For instance, you never learned how to compute your apps from your math professor, but that probably the first thing you will get when you go to work at the professor's lab. And also professors that frustrated in sense that when students come in. So they feel, you know, they feel like they have obligation to provide a senior student to tell the junior students say how to use this software that software this plot in that data, etc. And what we try to do here is that we want to train students in the and grass stage with linear statistics calculus, etc, and putting and coding. So that students will be able to will be ready to do research at the senior year or at master level or at entry pitch the level or going to work and they can use this to get a good job. Okay. And this is another one is outreach. So this summer just at just done last just last month. So, so we were training teachers local school teachers, and to use for DVD and are so the kids are very much interested in climate change. You get them to get a kind of data, and you must be easy and fast, and also funny interesting. And so they can enjoy it if you're also going to know our climate data online, you can find those that that, and they just spend five minutes just sticking up on it. And this is what I have another new. And this is the teachers have found they really like it, you know, a lot of figures are from the book they reproduce that. So those figures that they produced, you know, so. And, and then let's, let's to jump to this. It's an uncertainty. So there's this to this tools and then let's look at this uncertainty. And so one example of this is called spectral optimal average. And for the, for the, for, you know, so the question is this you asked this way, if you have stations in different spots. And then you find the original average. And then you say how good it is, what is it, what is error. And this, it depends on three things. One is location, which spots, they are geometry. And other one is how good is your opposition, your operational data. Now the instrument, the bad or good certain relative climate dynamics, ocean will be different from land desert will be different from, you know, from the forest areas. So, so how could we have a formulation that would incorporate all these three together. You know we learned objective analysis, that often is like you incorporate the first one and the second one. So, so often is the first one. And sometimes you can see the second one. And then we found out that in our objective analysis learning the error analysis part often is not very useful. And then the result tend to be quite useful. But the, the error part is basically totally, totally useless. So often you see the publications when using objective learnings, objective analysis. They don't use the, the error estimation from the objective analysis mathematics, rather, they use the error from cross validation. And so that basically they use one theory together without they use a little theory to do the, to do the, to do the error assessment. And there are many publications and I learned this method from Jerry North, and I learned a lot from Tom Smith and Tom was at NOAA also. And so we did quite a few papers in early 1990s. I started this with Jerry, and working on the satellite error, the prem error, prem satellite observational error. And then we worked with CPC I was, I was working there. And, and, and then with, with Tom Smith, Sparrow, Ken, and chat Robdowski, and try to answer the question for, for, for the, for WMO is that why is that where should we, if we only have 50 some, some stations along the globe, where should we put them. And this you heard is the Angiocultural over network. And other one would be that this for global warming assessment, what are the error bonds, you know, what is error bonds so in 2001 IPCC, and we quantified the error bonds by this method. So what that is, this is a kind of headache mathematics. And what is this, this incorporates this, all the three things. So one is that's locations. So this is a location, so the location called our eye. And if we proceed to see is the empirical orthogonal functions. And this, this lambda is the eigenvalue of that empirical orthogonal function mode. And then this is data error part. So this is data itself has error. So you have data error location, and then climbing the dynamics. So all these three things put together, you get into this. So this there is, you know, this is the way. So what is the main main principle, the principle is, is really a regression minimization of mean square error. Okay. And then you can extend this concept to ask other questions, suppose that you have scattered observations, you want to grid your data to, you know, to the grid boxes, and then you know what will be errors on each grid. So this becomes the error mapping problem. So you produce a reconstructed data. And then you want you, at the same time, you should also produce a error map together with it. And then, you know, when we, when you do forecast same thing. We have done a few SDS prediction with Tom Smith. And so, so we want to produce this error map. So that theory was established in 2001, when I was a visitor at God, God, a space and flight center with be a loss group. So bill directing me to work on this bill. I remember when I went there in 1999, as a visitor. And I see a visiting scientist visiting scholar. And he, he taught me that, so, well, you know, you probably good at math, but I want to work on something useful. Just like this morning's talk by Ndibi said that, you know, those computer scientists, they might be smart, but they work on different scales, different signals. So, so I learned a lot from Bill on this. And this is a slide that's really interesting to me, and I'm here and talked about this how we could misunderstood a misuse correlation. And so if you just look at correlation or standard deviation. That's not enough. And so, so often we often have that problems. Many papers published have this kind of errors that mean wrong. So what happened is not because the regression is wrong. It's not because the correlation is wrong is because we have not checked assumptions. So what are these assumptions. This is for assumptions in the, in the, in the, in the linear regression when we took the statistics course on this. So why is a model everybody agree with that yes there is such thing otherwise wouldn't wouldn't do it. Okay, then second one is that the model data and the error data both need to be long and distributed. And that we need to test that third is that the, the residuals should not vary too much. So there's pretty much constant variance with respect to X. And then the independence of the errors, the reason residuals should not have serial correlation. There's something called a building Watson test. And the number four is the most error is the most error people may have made in publications. And they just say, Oh, this is a degree of freedom, but actually because of serial correlation, the degrees of freedom become much less, the error become much bigger. And that there's nothing new is all your textbooks, except that this text books are hard to understand. There's so much mathematics. So they don't talk about physics. So in our climbing math book, we say that every important mass formula must have a climate science example, and every important climate science description, must have a mathematical description. Sam, you have about five minutes. Yeah. Thank you for reminding me. Yeah. So, so this is a lot of the example here is from Sergey's presentation. And now this is this we all know this data simulation, you know, this, this formulation is familiar to everyone here. So, so there are some of the mind assigned equal sign from so guess slides, those the copy, his copy, missed this, the science. So I cannot reproduce that but so some place who has the universe metrics, etc. And so this will be the key parties here, he was so good point out to people said that this there is our metrics is observational error, and there is a P metrics is focused error. Those two matrices are not known, you need to assume them, or need to compute them. And data, data assimilation, often people don't tell you this, this is my data simulation results that don't tell you this. And Sergey is really good and tell you, you know, the trick inside there. And what is the uncertainty, how sensitive is the result to this. And I like another lecture by Haim Kim is on the predictability and what it is. And of course, many people talk about it. There was a huge discussion on this huge debate. And so here we will, I look and say, what, what, what does the dictionary say, what can be just as the, you know, that's saying is from not what we want. And there is a definition start net and Wikipedia. That is the second one that promise what we want. But how do we quantify this. The question hit scores, like to size scores, quantize scores, and I MSE is cross many nations. And a very important part reproduced reproducible results, we need to reproduce our results. So, so this is reproducible like this is the papers and some journals are in this trend now. So this is the one example is that this is the PS paper. And the share with all the data or the code you the reader can reproduce everything very easily. And there's the ESST journal that you require you to do that. Okay, so we recently put a paper there. And, and then also another way to help us to understand paper better is that nowadays particularly with machine learning, we put flow chart flow chart is really good for for for people to understand your work. So, so we, you know, NCAR has that the big flow chart program chart. And for each program each one, each product has a sub flow chart that makes your result reproducible. So summary, and take home messages, and four things you know why is for DVD, why is that book, and when is that correlation, or how do you deal with the correlation always project schedule diagram, always do that. And a reproducible results. So you need to know I suggest that we all produce the open source code and data so that others can reproduce our results. Thank you very much for your attention. Thanks very much. I was especially pleased that you talked about how important it is to have serial correlations. And one comment I have to this this plot we showed about them, and also until show this the stochastic differential equation community. There's a big thing that you want to get first and second order statistics right but also lag time correlations, and a lot of these misunderstandings or a way, once you look at at least one time lag ideally more than one. And that gives you a lot of insights about linearity and nonlinearity as well. My question for you Sam is, what do you think right now, given that this is sort of an S to S science the summer colloquium, which area do you think the mathematical sciences and doing really, you know, math approaches will be most beneficial in advancing or understanding about as to a science. Well, I think I need this talk actually answer your question really is to explore the insight of machine learning fear the machine learning is a way our group is doing that actually I was going to present some of machine learning results from deep ocean really we find the physics to support your, you know, what do you want to get. And then you try to find the proper tool, and then you need to understand this tool.  It actually is built upon this, this logistic regression that means it's like our mind, you say, this is red, this is the black there is a threshold. And so there is that kind of mathematics, and that should be explicitly researched and step by step maybe put that example step by step and each step has the mathematical criteria. That's one of our things that most important part. Thanks so much.