Stats + Stories

Stats + Stories 056: Are communities helped by terraforming food deserts?

Special Guest: Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar

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.

Stats + Stories 055: Statistical Thinking to Fix Gerrymandering - Abstract Art or Modern Congressional Districts

Special Guest: Gary King

Gary King (@kinggary) is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. King focuses on innovations that span the range from statistical theory to practical application. His methods are used extensively in many fields of academia, government, consulting, and private industry. He is a founder, and inventor of the original technology for, Learning Catalytics, Crimson Hexagon, Perusall, and OpenScholar.

Stats + Stories 054: Statistics in Celebration of Earth Day - Jaguar corridors, koala conservation and reef health

Special Guest: Kerrie Mengersen

Kerrie Mengersen (@KerrieMengersen) is Distinguished Professor at the Queensland University of Technology and past-President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA). Her research spans Bayesian statistics, computational statistics, environmental, genetic and health statistics.

Stats + Stories 053: Protecting seaside cities from possible future impacts of climate change.

Special Guest: Peter Guttorp

Peter Guttorp (@guttorp) 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.

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Stats + Stories 052: Hey, I'm working on a story and can you help me with the statistics?

Special Guest: Rebecca Goldin

Rebecca Goldin ( @rebegol )is a professor of mathematics George Mason University and the Director of STATS at Sense About Science USA. She has received several grants from the National Science Foundation to support her research in mathematics and in statistics education, as well as the Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize from the Association of Women in Mathematics. Her work with STATS has appeared in many media sources, including NBC, CBS, NPR, CNN, and the Washington Post. She has worked with individual journalists from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, 538, and many other media outlets, as well as run workshops for journalists and students alike. In 2014, STATS became part of Sense About Science, USA, and a major collaboration with the American Statistical Association was established. She continues to direct the effort to work with journalists to improve statistical reporting.

Stats + Stories 051: Slavery in the Modern World

Special Guest: Davina Durgana

Davina P. Durgana (@DavinaDurgana) is Assistant Professor and Senior Practitioner Faculty at SIT Graduate Institute, human rights statistician who has developed models to assess risk and vulnerability to modern slavery. She is a Report Co-Author and Senior Statistician on the Walk Free Foundation’s Global Slavery Index. She is the 2016 Recipient of the American Statistical Association's Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate of the Year Award and a Forbes Top 30 Under 30 in Science for 2017 for her work on statistical modeling, human security theory, and human trafficking. She was a contributing author to the 2017 Chance issue (Chance Volume 30) on modern slavery.

Stats + Stories 050: Reading the book of love - what can you learn from relationship science?

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.

Stats + Stories 049: Balancing rigor and entertainment when telling stories about data.

With Special Guest: Nick Thieme

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 048: Were the cancer clusters real? Statistical support for evaluating public policy

With Special Guest: David Banks

David Banks is a statistician at Duke University. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and a former editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Statistics and Public Policy. His major areas of research include risk analysis, syndromic surveillance, agent-based models, dynamic text networks, and computational advertising.

Stats + Stories 047: Just in time for the holiday shopping season - The online Marketing Story

With Special Guest: Glenn Platt

Glenn Platt ​(@glennplatt) is the C. Michael Armstrong Professor of Network Technology & Management & Director of Interactive Media Studies​ at Miami University​​. He is interested in social media marketing, digital media and e-Commerce​​. He is also the​ ​faculty ​sponsor of the Esports team at Miami.