Stats + Stories

Barry Nussbaum (@StatisticsBarry ) is former Chief Statistician at the US EPA, and is president-elect of the American Statistical Association. Included among his many accomplishments at the EPA was providing leadership to the agency effort to remove lead from gasoline

More than 3 billion people rely on seafood to supply a significant portion of the annual protein in their diets. That number will only rise as the global population grows. At the same time, the United Nations reports that 85% of the world's fisheries are overfished or fully exploited. Researchers are studying the global seafood trade in search of sustainable solutions, and that's a focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Jessica Gephart.

Jessica Gephart is an assistant professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Science at the University of Washington, where she runs the seafood globalization lab. Her research focuses on the intersection of seafood globalization and environmental change, evaluating how seafood trade drives distant environmental impacts, as well as how environmental shocks disrupt seafood trade. Gephart served on the scientific leadership team for the blue food assessment, where she co-led the environment and justice chapters and served as a U.S. science envoy for the U.S. Department of State.

The work of suffragettes in both the United Kingdom and the United States has been immortalized in textbooks, as well as in movies and TV. The women activists who helped women gain the right to vote are often portrayed as heroes and radicals. What's gotten less attention is the connection between the statistical world and the suffragette movement. That's the focus of a recent article in Chance magazine as well as an issue of Significance Magazine written and edited respectively by our 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 early January 2026, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced changes to the childhood immunization schedules, reducing the number of vaccines recommended for children. This change led to the U.S. being an outlier in terms of required vaccines for children. One reason people express concern about vaccines is fear of adverse reactions. It may surprise many that there is a comprehensive system in place to monitor adverse outcomes, and this is the topic of this episode with guest Dr. Jeffrey Morris.

Dr. Jeffrey Morris is the George S. Pepper Professor of Public Health and Preventative Medicine and Director Biostatistics Division, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania. He has been actively involved in scientific communication efforts on social media and with various media outlets. He is also a distinguished research fellow at the Annenberg Center for Public Policy.

Three hundred and thirty-two days, that was the international statistic of the year in 2020, as identified by the Royal Statistical Society. That was the length of time between scientists publishing the genetic sequence of COVID-19 on the 11th of January, and an effective vaccine being administered on the 8th of December. This vaccine was an integral part of the world's pandemic response. Vaccines aren't new. In a World Health Organization report describing the history of vaccines, Dr. Edward Jenner is credited with the world's first successful vaccine for smallpox in 1796. In the last 100 years, vaccines were developed for yellow fever, pertussis, polio, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella, and more. Well, how do we know vaccines are safe and effective? Why do some people argue against using vaccines? That's the topic of this episode with guest Dr. Jeffery Morris.

Dr. Jeffrey Morris is the George S. Pepper Professor of Public Health and Preventative Medicine and Director Biostatistics Division, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania. He has been actively involved in scientific communication efforts on social media and with various media outlets. He is also a distinguished research fellow at the Annenberg Center for Public Policy.

According to the World Bank, some 3.5 billion people live on less than $7 a day. That's more than 40% of the global population. Almost 700 million of those individuals live in extreme poverty, getting by on less than $2.15 a day. In the US in 2024, almost 40 million Americans were living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census. But what do all these numbers mean? How do the people researching income inequality measure poverty, and how reliable are those measurements? That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest David Johnson.

David Johnson is the executive director of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth. Prior to that, he served as a study director for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and medicine, for a report called, "Creating an integrated system of data and statistics on household income, consumption and wealth.". Johnson also served for 25 years in the Federal Statistical system, where he was the only senior executive to have leadership roles at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the US Census Bureau. At the Census, he led the implementation of the supplemental poverty measure and the reengineering of the Survey of Income and Program Participation.

Dr. Lloyd Edwards is Professor and Chair of Biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Edwards has an extensive background in collaborating with researchers in a broad range of areas in biomedical research, including cardiovascular disease, cystic fibrosis, cancer, aging, pediatrics, and minority health. His primary area of applied statistical research relates to the analysis of longitudinal data. Specifically, his statistical research includes derivation of techniques for computation of power, control of Type I error, and measuring model fit in linear and generalized linear mixed models.

Television is filled with "will they or won't they" couples. Friends had Ross and Rachel. Parks and Rec had Leslie and Ben. The Gilmore Girls, had Lorelei and Luke. But what happens after the couple's kiss? Do we keep watching? One statistician dug into the data behind the kiss effect, and that's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Ashley Mullan. 

Ashley Mullan is a PhD student and research assistant in Vanderbilt University's Department of biostatistics. Currently, Mullan works on a team focusing on the care children receive in Tennessee's child welfare and juvenile justice systems. She's also interested in pop culture, and in her spare time, analyzes her own consumption of popular media. That led Mullan to author a Significance article on The Kiss Effect, the impact of a "will they won't they?" couple's first kiss on a TV show's ratings.

Peter Guttorp (@pgseattle) is a Professor at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, Norway, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is also a vice-president of the International Statistical Institute . His research focuses on stochastic models of scientific data and their statistical analysis. He has worked in seismology, hydrology, climatology, hematology and biology.

When it comes to studying conflict, there is obvious data to examine: spending on arms, the number of people killed or injured, and the amount of land won or lost. What's harder to track are the indirect effects of conflict, the ways it produces deaths over time, or its impacts on public health. Researchers are trying to find ways to account for the sometimes less obvious impacts of conflict, and that's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Xiao Hui Tai.

Xiao Hui Tai is an assistant professor of statistics at the University of California Davis' Department of Statistics. Her research interests include the use of non-traditional data sources to study problems in data-scarce settings. With the current focus on global public health and estimating the consequences of violent conflict, she's the author of the Significance article Counting the True Cost of War.