Stats + Stories

Gerd Gigerenzer is Director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and partner of Simply Rational - The Institute for Decisions. Gigerenzer has trained U.S. federal judges, German physicians, and top managers in decision making and understanding risks and uncertainties.

Nick Thieme (@FurrierTranform) is a research fellow at University of California Hastings Institute for Innovation Law and freelance writer for a variety of outlets. Currently, his work focuses on AI regulation, cybersecurity, and pharmaceutical patent trolling. His writing has

appeared in Slate Magazine, BuzzFeed News, and Significance Magazine. He was the 2017 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Slate Magazine, writing about technology, science, and statistics. In particular, he wrote about the role of p-values in the replication crisis, the overblown, existential fear caused by the dangers of AI, and the NotPetya cyberattacks in Ukraine. He is also part of an ASA team currently in the process of helping found a new blog, aimed at undergraduates, practicing statisticians, and the general public.

Stats + Stories 063: Happy Birthday to R

With Special Guest: Nick Thieme

Nick Thieme (@FurrierTransform) is a researcher and freelance reporter with writings appearing in Slate Magazine, BuzzFeed News, Significance Magazine, and Undark Magazine. Both his writings and research focus on technology, science, and statistics. Currently, he's working at New America’s Open Technology Institute investigating fair internet usage and net neutrality.

Hadley Wickham (@hadleywickham) is Chief Scientist at RStudio, a member of the R Foundation, and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and the University of Auckland. He builds tools (both computational and cognitive) to make data science easier, faster, and more fun. His work includes packages for data science (the tidyverse: including ggplot2, dplyr, tidyr, purrr, and readr) and principled software development (roxygen2, testthat, devtools). He is also a writer, educator, and speaker promoting the use of R for data science ( http://hadley.nz ).>.

Kathyrn Miles ( @Kathryn_Miles ) is a journalist, Writer-in-residence at Green Mountain College and author of QUAKELAND: ON THE ROAD TO AMERICA'S NEXT DEVASTATING EARTHQUAKE and SUPERSTORM.

Andreas V. Georgiou is an economist with specializations in Monetary Theory and Stabilization Policy and in International Trade and Finance. After working for the International Monetary Fund, he returned to Greece in 2010 to head the newly established Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT)-the successor of the National Statistical Service of Greece following the onset of the economic crisis in Greece. He was President of the Hellenic Statistical Authority for 5 years. He worked to re-organize and rebuild the institution, on a new basis of fully conforming to international and European statistical standards and practices, leading to the establishment of the credibility of Greek statistics. He is an elected Member of the International Statistical Institute . He has been a Visiting Associate Professor in Finance, Banking and Investment, at the Economics University Bratislava, Slovak Republic, and a Visiting Lecturer at Amherst College. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at Amherst College.

Luke Bornn (@LukeBornn) is currently Vice President, Strategy and Analytics for the Sacramento Kings . Prior to joining the Kings, Bornn served as Head of Analytics for A.S. Roma of the Italian Serie A Football League, where he worked closely with managers, coaches and sports scientists to measure and evaluate athletes and performance. In addition to his work with soccer and basketball teams, the British Columbia native has previously held tenure-track professorships in Statistics at both Harvard University and Fraser University. Bornn is a frequent contributor to the field of sports analytics, authoring research articles for the Journal for Quantitative Analysis, the Annals of Applied Statistics and the Journal of the American Statistical Association amongst others.

Diane Coyle. Diane is founder of Enlightenment Economics , and Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She was recently appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for "services to Economics and the Public Understanding of Economics". She is also the author of the 2014 book -- GDP A Brief but Affectionate History.

Ty Tashiro (@tytashiro) is an author and relationship expert. He wrote Awkward: The Science of Why We're Socially Awkward and Why That's Awesome and The Science of Happily Ever After. His work has been featured at the New York Times, Time.com, The Atlantic.com, NPR, Sirius XM Stars radio, and VICE. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota, has been an award-winning professor at the University of Maryland and University of Colorado, and has addressed TED@NYC, Harvard Business School, MIT's Media Lab, and the American Psychological Association.

Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar is a senior statistician and Director of the Statistics Advisory Center at RAND Corporation. Her current research interests center on leveraging natural experiment designs to estimate the effects of neighborhood-level 'interventions' or changes on residents' health behaviors (e.g. diet, physical activity) and outcomes (e.g. obesity). Her statistical expertise is in the areas of study design, survey methods, non-response, and analysis of longitudinal and multilevel data.