Stats + Stories

Paul Scanlon is a survey methodologist and research social scientist in the Questionnaire Design Research Laboratory at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. His research focuses on attitudes towards privacy and confidentiality in federal surveys and on how questionnaire evaluation methods can be used to validate international health surveys.

Karen Kafadar, Rudy Professor of Statistics and Physics at Indiana University, joined the Stats+Stories regulars to discuss forensic science, the evidence used help solve crimes. She was a member of a National Research Council (NRC) committee that produced the report Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, and she has written on Statistical Issues in Assessing Forensic Evidence.

Tommy Wright, statistician in the US Census Center for Statistical Research and Methodology, joined the Stats+Stories regulars to discuss what the US Census Bureau does and why it is important. (The Census data visualization library is a treat and should be explored by anyone with an interest in viewing characteristics of the US.)

Jim Albert, co-author of Curveball: Baseball, Statistics and the Role of Chance in the Game , editor of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis and Sports , and professor of statistics at Bowling Green State University will join the Stats and Stories regulars to discuss why statistics and baseball have been linked for decades and how this connection has strengthened with the growing presence of sabermetrics in player and team management.

Stats + Stories 062: R R R R R ... not just for pirates anymore

With Special Guest: Hadley Wickham

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).

Stats + Stories 061: Feeling the Earth move

With Special Guest: Kathyrn Miles

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.

Stats + Stories 060: Holding up a mirror to society - a tale of official statistics in Greece

With Special Guest: Andreas V. Georgiou

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.

Stats + Stories 059: G ..O.. O.. A.. A.. L.. L.. - statistics of the beautiful game

With Special Guest: Luke Bornn

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.

Stats + Stories 058: G-D-P, it's easy as 1-2-3

With Special Guest: 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.

Stats + Stories 057: Awkwardness and Social Relationships - Chins and ears are not information rich

With Special Guest: Ty Tashiro

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, TheAtlantic.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.