Stats + Stories

Natalie Shlomo is Professor of Social Statistics since joining the faculty in September 2012. She was the head of the Department of Social Statistics (2014-2017). Her research interests are in topics related to survey statistics and survey methodology. She is the UK principle investigator for several collaborative grants from the 7th Framework Programme and H2020 of the European Union all involving research in improving survey statistics and dissemination. She was the principle investigator for the ESRC grant on theoretical sample designs for a new UK birth cohort and co-investigator for the NCRM grant focusing on non-response in biosocial research. She was also principle investigator for the Leverhulme Trust International Network Grant on Bayesian Adaptive Survey Designs. She is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. She is an elected council member (to 2021) and Vice-President (to 2019) of the International Statistical Institute. She serves on editorial boards of several journals as well as national and international advisory boards.

Tim Macuga joined the QUT Centre for Data Science at the start of 2022 where he expands connections and amplifies research for the Centre and for the Australian Data Science Network.

Before he joined CDS, Tim served as Media and Communications Officer for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS). There, he led the creation of all the content for news on the Centre’s website, social media, and YouTube channels. He also produced the ACEMS podcast, The Random Sample.

Prior to moving to Australia in 2014, Tim spent nearly 30 years in television news production and management in the United States. The last 20 of those years, serving as a Producer and then Executive News Producer for the FOX-TV affiliate in Phoenix, Arizona.

Communicating facts about science well, is an art. Especially if you are trying to reach an audience outside your area of expertise. A statistician in Norway however, is convinced that how you say something is just as important as what you say when it comes to science communication. That topic is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Jo Røislien.

Jo Røislien is a professor of medical statistics at the University of Stavanger, and has been involved in numerous research projects in medicine and health. As a medical statistician, he has worked to improve quantitative research methodologies in a number of fields from cancer research, clinical trials, nursing research, radiology, rehabilitation, obesity, drug research, addiction, public health and prehospital critical care.

Kelly Spoon a tenured faculty member at San Diego Mesa College. She teaches mathematics and statistics within the Mathematics department. She’s had a number of different roles on campus and within my department, including STEM Professional Learning Coordinator and is involved in statistics education and focused on culturally responsive teaching.

Amy Hogan is an NYC high school teacher. Currently teaching AP Statistics, Math Analysis (sophomore math team), and Algebra 2. She is involved with stats education at the K-12 level with the ASA and NCTM, and served on the committee for USCOTS 2023.

Daniel Kaplan is a nationally recognized college professor in Statistics, Data Science, and Applied Mathematics. Author of multiple university-level textbooks, award winning teacher and curriculum developer. Strong innovator in teaching with professional-level software and author of several R packages for teaching data science, statistics, and calculus.

The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education, aka CAUSE has held the United States Conference on teaching statistics, also known as USCOTS every other year since 2005. This conference enables teachers of statistics to exchange ideas and discover how to improve their teaching. The theme of this year's conference was communicating with and about data, a topic near and dear to us on the Stats and Stories podcast. Two sub-themes are explored as part of this conference, helping students to communicate the process and results of their statistical analysis, and helping teachers to communicate with students in order to develop their understanding of statistical concepts and their ability to implement statistical methods for conversations with leaders and speakers at the United States Conference on teaching statistics were recorded on site. And we are happy to feature these in a collection of episodes of Stats and Stories.

What is the best way to support people living in extreme poverty? Could unconditional cash transfers and universal basic income be viable options? How can we know if such programs will work? Today's episode of stats and stories focuses on addressing the needs of people living in extreme poverty with Miriam Laker.

Dr. Miriam Laker is the Global Director of Research at GiveDirectly and a Senior Research Scientist and Epidemiologist with nearly two decades of experience conducting research. Amongst her extensive experience, she led the design of the evaluation plans for GiveDirectly’s recently launched Yemen Refugees program; the learning agenda for large cash for refugees in Rwanda, and the evaluation of cash transfers in a disaster (floods and landslides) response in Uganda. She was also involved in a recently concluded randomized controlled trial evaluation of the impacts of large lump sum cash transfers on refugee and host households in Uganda.

The Women’s World Cup is about to kick off in Australia and New Zealand with the defending champion U.S. Women’s national team once again the favorite to win the whole thing. They will have to make it past the English, Spanish, and German sides though, before they raise the world cup trophy high. A new book new out now explores the tournament with guest Adam Beissel.

Adam Beissel (@ExtraBeissHit) is a professor of sports leadership and management at Miami University. His primary research interests include: the political economy of Sport Mega-Events; Global Politics of International Sport; Sport Stadiums and Urban Development; Social and Economic (in)justice in College Sport; Sports Labor Markets and Global Athletic Migration. Beissel is currently working on two interconnected and interdisciplinary research projects critically examining the cultural and political economies of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup joint hosted by Australia and New Zealand and the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup joint hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Where do you live? Who are your neighbors? Do you rent or own? What housing is available in your community? Today’s episode of stats and stories focuses on how and why we want to understand Americans’ experience with housing, with guest Dr. Emily Molfino. 

Dr. Emily Molfino is the Special Assistant to the Chief Scientist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Her work focuses on improving data dissemination and the use of administrative data for the Census. While previously at the Census, Dr. Molfino worked extensively on modernizing the American Housing Survey using administrative data and process improvements. During this time, Dr. Molfino also produced research on the use of housing administrative data, which was published in Cityscape during her work at HUD.

How do you learn about what's going on in the world? Did a news headline grab your attention? Did a news story report on recent research? What do you need to know to be a critical consumer of the news you read? If you are looking to start developing your data self-defense and critical news consumption skills, this book is for you! It reflects a long-term collaboration between a statistician and a journalist to shed light on the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. The only prerequisite for enjoying this book is an interest in developing the skills and insights for better understanding news stories that incorporate quantitative information.

The news landscape is continuously in flux as new media technologies are developed and audience needs shift. This mix of new tech and new needs, has made it important that audiences be able to understand quantitive information. A research project between Knology and PBS NewsHour is studying just how people consume news and numbers. That project is the focus of this episode of Stats & Stories with guests Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein and Laura Santhanam.

Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein is a linguistic anthropologist who leads the media research at Knology, as well as Associate Editor of Public Anthropologies at American Anthropologist. They lead Knology's participatory collaborations with news organizations, including PBS NewsHour. Their research interests center on the relationship between scientific authority and questions of epistemic and probabilistic certainty. Their doctoral research focused on media circulation and socialization into the global community of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Laura Santhanam is the Health Reporter and Coordinating Producer for Polling for the PBS NewsHour, where she has also worked as the Data Producer. Santhanam uses narrative and numbers to tell stories. Her work at the NewsHour merged her career as a newspaper reporter at the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Arizona Republic with her work as a media analyst at Pew Research Center. She previously worked as a senior climate researcher at Media Matters for America, where she wrote blogs that examined climate change and managed data-driven projects on the media’s coverage of issues related to energy and the environment.