Stats + Stories

Sports and statistics go hand-in-hand. But some of those statistics are more interesting than others. Each year, the Royal Statistical Society highlights some of the most compelling sports stats in its Sports Statistic of the Year competition this year’s winners are the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with Jessica Hargreaves and Robert Mastrodomenico.

Jessica Hargreaves is the chair of the RSS’s Statistics in Sport Section. She’s also a Lecturer in Statistics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of York. Her academic focus includes nonstationary time series analysis, wavelet analysis, and applications in sports analytics, such as ClusterAFC. She also researches pedagogy, including peer-assisted learning and accessible course notes.

Rob Mastrodomenico is a sports statistician and an active fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He’s been the chair of the Statisticians for Society initiative since its inception in 2017. He’s also an RSS Statistical Ambassador, which involves regular work with the media in assisting with their reporting of statistical issues. Mastrodomenico also works as director of data science at Blue Crow Sports Group.

Last academic year colleges and universities across the US struggled with whether to mandate COVID vaccinations for their students. While colleges often require vaccines, the political controversy surrounding the COVID shots made adopting a vaccine policy a complicated undertaking. But according to one study, it had a profound impact on the national COVID death toll last fall. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Riley Acton.

Riley Acton is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Miami University, as well as a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) and the College Crisis Initiative (C2i). She is an applied microeconomist who specializes in labor economics and the economics of education. Her current work examines the causes and consequences of decisions made by higher education institutions, the effect of local labor market shocks on K-12 and college students, and the impact of school finance policies on educational outcomes.

Taylor Swift is an entertainment juggernaut. She's become one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, with her Eras tour grossing more than $2 billion. During that tour, Swift surprised her audience each night with costume changes to mark different eras of her career. Now, a couple of researchers have figured out how to predict what costumes Swift would wear, when, and if these outfit colors were related to the sentiment of songs being performed. Predicting the colors of Swift's Eras tour is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guests Marina Ferrari de Aquino Klemm and Charlotte M. Jones-Todd.

Marina Ferrari de Aquino Klemm is an associate curator at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. She can be found listening to Taylor Swift while she's on marine expeditions throughout the South Pacific, cataloging museum specimens, or analyzing all sorts of biodiversity data.

Charlotte Jones-Todd taught as a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She spends her time teaching statistics and coding, fixing bugs, pandering to her pets, and baking bread.

It can take decades for an urban community to develop, but a fraction of that time for it to be torn apart. Each year, urban residents are forced out of their homes and out of their communities to make way for gentrification or other kinds of urban development. When these individuals are forced to leave their homes, they're also forced to leave behind their histories and cultures. These changes often rob communities of support systems, which is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Dr. Tim Thomas.

Dr. Tim Thomas is a professional researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as research director of the Urban Displacement Project. He also founded and serves as the director of the Eviction Research Network. He recently served as the chief research and data officer at the King County Regional Homeless Authority, where he led efforts to use data-driven strategies to address homelessness. Thomas's research focuses on neighborhood change, housing disparity, and urban displacement. His works informed tenant protection laws across the country, as well as the eviction moratorium during the COVID pandemic.

The World Health Organization defines health equity as a public health concept describing equity of access to health resources for genetic, socio-environmental, and economic determinants of health, varying according to individuals, families, and social or societal groups. Concerns about data equity have surfaced, which may result in many populations, including those in rural areas with disabilities, experiencing homelessness or living in low and middle-income regions of the world, being underrepresented in health data sets. This can lead to biased findings and suboptimal health outcomes for certain subgroups, which is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Bhramar Mukherjee.

Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee is the inaugural Senior Associate Dean of Public Health Data Science and Data Equity and the Anna M. R. Lauder Professor of Biostatistics, as well as Professor of Epidemiology and of Statistics and Data Science at Yale University. Among her many honors, she was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2022.

A 2010 statistic reports that, on average, there are 29,000 personal bankruptcy filings per week in the US, while another states that, on average, 50,000 pieces of floating plastic per square mile are observed in the Pacific Ocean. How might art be used to convey the magnitude of these statistics, suppose 29,000 credit card images of them were arranged to compose a larger image of a full moon, or 50,000 plastic bag images were used as elements to produce an image of a whale? Would you find yourself drawn to the art, and then deeper into the story that inspired the art? Our episode today considers how art might be used to convey and engage people in considering human impact on the world, or the human experience in it, with guest Chris Jordan.

Chris Jordan creates photographic digital images of jarring statistics related to American consumption. Each large-scale image gives visual life to incomprehensible statistics like 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage, and 28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes. Jordan graduated from the University of Texas School of Law and, while interested in art, made his living as a corporate attorney in Seattle.

As you reach the end of a long day with an excess of stress how do you recharge? Have you found that a long stroll in the sun or through the woods can provide this renewal? Walking in nature is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Dr. Altea Lorenzo-Arribas.

Dr. Altea Lorenzo-Arribas is a socio-economic statistician at Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) working in collaboration with researchers at the Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutions. She is an elected council member of the Royal Statistical Society and secretary of the History of Statistics Section, as well as a member of the Women Committee of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, and the Spanish Biostatistics Network (Biostatnet). She is passionate about uncovering the hidden stories of women in the history of statistics, and firmly believes in the need for a more equal, diverse and inclusive discipline.

In order to promote the economic and social development of countries, you have to be clear about what economic and social development even means and how you'll measure these concepts. This is where official statistics excels. Many nations continue to build the capacity of their statistical systems to address the needs of their countries. Our episode today focuses on official statistics and statistical capacity development with guest Oliver Chinganya.

Oliver Chinganya is the chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Zambia statistical agency, and co chair of the advisory board for Digital Earth Africa. He was recently appointed a senior advisor at the International Growth Center at the London School of Economics. Formerly, he was chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Zambia Statistical Agency and co-chair of the advisory board of the Georgia Africa until January 2025. Chinganya served as director of the African Center for Statistics and chief statistician at the UN Economic Commission for Africa, also known as UNICA. Until October 2025, he was vice president of the International Statistical Institute. His career also includes senior roles at the African Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Zambia Statistical Office. He is a fellow chartered statistician and chartered scientist of the Royal Statistical Society and is widely recognized for advancing statistical capacity and driving digital innovation across Africa.

In the late 1600s, a book was published satirizing politics in Europe. Published two decades after the end of the 30 Years’ War, it focuses on the power of the Holy Roman Empire. That book’s impact on statistics is the focus of this episode of stats and stories, with guest Wallace Ferguson.

Wallace Ferguson has taught mathematics and statistics at Chatham and Clarendon Grammar School, Kent, England since 1994. He writes book reviews for the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications, which are published in their journal, ‘Mathematics Today’. His interests include statistical etymology and his article ‘Microscopium statisticum and the etymology of statistics’ was published in the February edition of Significance. Ferguson is currently working on a follow on article, ‘Literature, Politics and the Framing of the State, 1300 – 1648’. He was a member of The Royal Statistical Society History of Statistics committee from 2018 until this year.

With the arrival of spring, anticipation grows for the start of horse racing in the United States. The pinnacle of success in the sport is achieved by a horse that will win each leg of the Triple Crown, which includes the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. The excitement and anticipation of these three races are also associated with pre-race bookmaking and betting as well. But just how good are the bookmakers at setting the odds of victory? Do their favorites win, or will long shots emerge victorious? That's the topic on today's episode of Stats+Stories with guest Larry Kupper.

Dr. Kupper is Emeritus Alumni Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests included the development and application of Statistical Methods for public health studies, particularly environmental, occupational, and women's health, and quantifying health risks from exposure to environmental and workplace hazards.