DataBytes

Word on the street is that women prefer warmer temperatures than men do. Researchers designed an experiment to investigate whether this is actually true, specifically, considering how men and women perform on various cognitive tasks under different temperature scenarios. In this episode, we dissect the study so you can judge whether you believe the results.

Jeopardy! is a weeknightly televised trivia game show. In recent months, one player, James Holzhauer has taken the Jeopardy! fandom by storm with his unusual style of play and his long run of big wins. In this episode, we discuss how statistics can help explain his betting tactics, and we discuss how some other Jeopardy! players have used statistics to help up their game.

In this episode, we discuss a number of miscellaneous news updates regarding facial recognition technology (concerning San Francisco, Amazon, and pandas!).  And then, we talk about how much we trust AI-generated profiles for Airbnb.

In this episode, we look at a study about whether ride-sharing services contribute to increased or decreased traffic congestion in San Francisco. We then discuss some strategies to build interpretable machine learning models.

In this episode, we talk about a new innovation that enables household electronics to see what's around them. We then discuss Google Duplex, an AI designed to happily make reservations and appointments for you.

Susan recently served as a judge at a local DataFest competition (a weekend-long data competition for undergraduates). She shares her experiences and recommendations for future contestants. We then discuss how Facebook data might be helpful for counting the number of people how migrated from Puerto Rico to the mainland U.S. as a result of Hurricane Maria.

In this episode, we discuss FiveThirtyEight.com's analysis of primary election polling over the past 40 years. In particular, we consider whether early polling is helpful for predicting election outcomes.  And then, we talk about a study that potentially blames Netflix for a surge in teenage suicides in 2017.

In this episode, we discuss how Google's Now Playing feature can identify songs that are playing around you, using embeddings. We then talk about a study that reports on America's perceptions about artificial intelligence -- who can we trust to develop AI responsibly?

In this episode, we discuss how bookmakers price/take bets on outcomes in the Game of Thrones. We then discuss a study that claimed that lefthanded people have shorter life expectancies than righthanded people. Spoiler alert: lefthanders have nothing to worry about!

Buckle up for a sports-filled episode! We discuss a study that analyzes the accuracy of umpire calls about strikes vs. balls and take a deep dive into FiveThirtyEight.com's statistical methods for predicting the winner of the Champions League.