Stats + Stories

Megan Price is the executive director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), and designs strategies and methods for statistical analysis of human rights data for projects in a variety of locations including Guatemala, Colombia, and Syria. She has contributed analyses submitted as evidence in two court cases in Guatemala and has served as the lead statistician and author on three UN reports documenting deaths in Syria

Lance A. Waller, Ph.D. is Rollins Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. He is a member of the National Academy of Science Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics and has served on National Academies Committees on applied and theoretical statistics, cancer near nuclear facilities, geographic assessments of exposures to Agent Orange, and standoff explosive technologies.

Julia Silge is a data scientist at Stack Overflow, with a PhD in astrophysics and an abiding love for Jane Austen. She is both an international speaker and a real-world practitioner focusing on data analysis and machine learning practice. She is the author of Text Mining with R, with her coauthor David Robinson. She loves making beautiful charts and communicating about technical topics with diverse audiences.

Christie Aschwanden is the author of GOOD TO GO: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery and the lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight. Her new podcast, Emerging Form  launches in mid-February. Find her on Twitter @CragCrest.

Mark Glickman, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, is Senior Lecturer on Statistics at Harvard University, and Senior Statistician at the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, a VA Center of Innovation.  He is well-known for his work in games and sports, having created the Glicko and Glicko-2 rating systems that are widely used in online gaming.

Julia Silge is a data scientist at Stack Overflow, with a PhD in astrophysics and an abiding love for Jane Austen. She is both an international speaker and a real-world practitioner focusing on data analysis and machine learning practice. She is the author of Text Mining with R, with her coauthor David Robinson. She loves making beautiful charts and communicating about technical topics with diverse audiences.

Mark Hansen is a professor of journalism where he also serves as the Director of the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Founded in 2012, the Brown Institute is a bi-coastal collaboration between Columbia Journalism School and the School of Engineering at Stanford University -- its mission is to explore the interplay between technology and story. 

Prior to joining Columbia, Hansen was a Professor in the Department of Statistics at UCLA. In addition to his technical work, Hansen also has an active art practice involving the presentation of data for the public. His work with the Office for Creative Research has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the London Science Museum, the Cartier Foundation in Paris, and the lobbies of the New York Times building and the Public Theater (permanent displays) in Manhattan. Hansen holds a BS in Applied Math from the University of California, Davis, and a PhD and MA in Statistics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sharon Hessney is a veteran K-12 math teacher and writer, moderator, and coordinator of What's Going On With this Graph? WGOWTG is a free, weekly online feature, is a partnership of the New York Times Learning Network and the American Statistical Association.

David Spiegelhalter is Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, and President of the Royal Statistical Society.

Lisa LaVange and Ron Wasserstein appear in this episode.

Lisa LaVange, PhD, is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her role as associate chair, she coordinates development of the data science curriculum at the Gillings School. She is also director of the department’s Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center (CSCC), overseeing faculty, staff, and students involved in large-scale clinical trials and epidemiological studies coordinated by the center.

Dr. LaVange is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and is the 2018 ASA President. She is also former president of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (ENAR-IBS) and former IBS Board member. She is instructor for a graduate course in statistical leadership and a guest lecturer in the clinical trials course, both at UNC.

Ronald L. (Ron) Wasserstein is the executive director of the American Statistical Association (ASA). Wasserstein assumed the ASA’s top staff leadership post in August 2007. Prior to joining the ASA, Wasserstein was a mathematics and statistics department faculty member and administrator at Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., from 1984–2007. During his last seven years at the school, he served as the university’s vice president for academic affairs.