Episódios
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Every year, statistics classes are filled with math averse students who white knuckle it to the end of the semester in the hopes of getting a passing grade. And the dream of forgetting about math and statistics for a little while. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if instead of white knuckling it, students were actually excited about the subject; or, at the very least, not terrified of it? Two professors has been developing strategies to help students get over their fear of “sadisistics” and that’s the focus of this special two part episode Stats and Stories
Hunter Glanz is an Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science at California Polytechnic State University. He maintains a passion for machine learning and statistical computing, and enjoys advancing education efforts in these areas. In particular, Cal Poly’s courses in multiple computing languages give him the opportunity to connect students with exciting data science topics amidst a firm grounding in communication of statistical ideas.
Rhys Jones is an internationally recognized expert in statistical literacy and education, known for his leadership in curriculum development, digital learning, and student engagement. Originally trained in biochemistry and immunology, he transitioned to focus on making statistics more accessible and engaging for students and teachers across various education levels. -
An entire industry has grown up around nutrition and health. People pushing everything from shakes, to meal kits, to special diets. While some of the claims surrounding such products can be questionable at best, the field of nutrition science is growing. Filled with researchers who are working to truly understand the science of food that is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Michelle Cardel.
Dr. Cardel is an obesity and nutrition scientist, registered dietitian, the Director of Global Clinical Research & Nutrition at WW International, Inc. (formerly Weight Watchers) and a faculty member at the University of Florida (UF) College of Medicine, where she is also an Associate Director for the Center for Integrative Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases. Her research is focused on three areas, assessing the effects of psychosocial factors, including low social status and food insecurity, on eating behavior and obesity-related disease, the development and implementation of effective healthy lifestyle interventions with a focus on underserved populations, and improving gender equity within academia. -
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In a commencement speech in 2016, Atul Gawande told the crowd that science is a, "commitment to a systematic way of thinking, an allegiance to a way of building knowledge and explaining the universe through testing and factual observation." In the last ten years that understanding of science has become muddied for the public. Social media has helped fuel the rise of conspiracy theories built upon so-called alternative facts as people claiming to be experts spout anti-science ideas. Communicating scientific ideas was already difficult, but it’s become even more difficult in this environment. Science communication is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, with guest Ionica Smeets.
Ionica Smeets is, chair of the science communication and society research group at Leiden University. She’s also chair of the board of The National Centre of Expertise on Science and Society of The Netherlands. Her research lies in the gap between experts and the public when it comes to science communication, with special interest in the problems that occur when those groups communicate and what scientists can do about those problems. Smeets is the author of a number of journal articles on this topic and engaged in science communication for the public when she worked on a Dutch TV show about math. She’s also the co-creator of a children’s book called Maths and Life. -
More than 15 years ago, Thomas Friedman wrote, “I prefer the term “global weirding,” because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.” Today’s Stats+Stories episode will be a conversation about how a small shift in temperatures can lead to large changes in extreme weather events with guest Brett Falk.
Dr. Falk is a research professor in computer and Information Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Crypto and Society Lab. He is the author of a recent CHANCE article "Why Will a Small Increase in Global Temperature Lead to a Large Increase in the Number of Heat Waves? Truncation and Extreme Events". -
Earth day was launched in 1970 in the aftermath of several environmental disasters in the publication of Rachel Carson Silent Spring. It was designed to help raise awareness of environmental issues and has since grown into a global event. With this year's Earth Day taking out a particular urgency in light of the most recent UN Climate Report. But what goes into the scientific research that informs some this activism? What statistical tools are used to better understand the health of our environment. That's the focus of this episode of staffs and stories with guest Philip Dixon.
Philip Dixon is a professor of statistics at Iowa State University. Dixon research interests include developing and evaluating statistical methods to answer interesting biological questions. Some of his current projects are developing non-parametric estimates of prediction distributions, modeling physical activity data, and developing model-based visualizations of species composition data. -
According to the U.S. State Department, three-fifths of global GDP, three-quarters of world trade, and 90 percent of official development assistance can be accounted for in 38 countries. Those countries are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development – or OECD. Founded in 1961 and headquartered in Paris, the OECD’s goals include stimulating global economic growth by providing a forum for intergovernmental collaboration. It’s also the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Steve MacFeely.
Steve MacFeely is, chief statistician at the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development and adjunct professor at University College Cork. MacFeely joined OECD in August of last year as chief statistician and director of statistics and the data directorate. Before joining the organization, MacFeely served as Director of Data and Analytics at the World Health Organization and as Director of Statistics and Information at U-N Trade and Development. He has also served as the Deputy Director-General at the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in Ireland. -
When people think of public goods, they most likely think of things like parks or schools. But official statistics are also a kind of public good. They help us understand things like housing prices, the costs of goods and the spread of disease. However, this data infrastructure is under threat around the world. The work of official statisticians and the obstacles they face, is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Erika Groshen.
Groshen is a senior economics advisor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and research fellow at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. From 2013 to 2017 she served as the 14th commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the principal federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions and inflation. She's an expert on official statistics, authoring an article in 2021 pondering their future. -
Lisa LaVange is the 2018 President of the American Statistical Association and she is PhD, is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Biostatistics { add link to dept } in the Gillings School of Global Public Health { add link to Gillings SPH } at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 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.
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. -
Chart Spark | Stats + Stories Episode 359 by The Stats + Stories Team
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The use of force by police has been in the news a lot lately, in connection to everything from protests on college campuses to the death of individuals during arrests. There’s no singular, shared definition of what use of force is according to the National Institute of Justice. A local police department will set a standard, but that threshold for when an office should use force varies from place to place. Having no standard set of rules or definitions makes it difficult for researchers to study the issue. That’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Claire Kelling.
Claire Kelling is an assistant professor of statistics at Carleton College. She’s an expert on data and statistics in relation to police use of force and says her work sits "at the intersection of criminology and spatial statistics". Kelling organized the 2023 Ingram Olkin Forum on Statistical Challenges in the Analysis of Police Use of Force. Five articles from that forum appeared in a special themed section of December’s issue of Chance including several authored or co-authored by Kelling. -
The COVID pandemic has complicated everything from school to work to grocery shopping. The need to physically distance from people not in our homes has made it difficult to maintain friendships or causal relationships while being stuck at home with a significant other for months on end can make even the biggest house seem tiny. COVID’s impact on relationships and sex is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Debby Herbenick.
Herbenick is a sex educator, sex advice columnist, author, research scientist, children's book author, blogger, television personality, professor, and human sexuality expert in the media. Dr. Herbenick is a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health and was lead investigator of the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior. -
Sports analytics is a booming industry with new technologies allowing for the parsing of ever more sophisticated statistics. Analysts can now examine the height and the force of a gymnast tumbling pass, the probability of going for it on a 4th down in football, actually working out, and the arc of the best swing for a baseball player. Analytics are also used in the conditioning of athletes, particularly for all the baseball players preparing for the start of the MLB's spring training. Analytics is the focus of this episode of stats and stories with guest Alexandre Andorra.
Alexandre Andorra is a Senior Applied Scientist for the Miami Marlins as well a Bayesian modeler at the PyMC Labs consultancy firm that he cofounded as well as the host the podcast dedicated to Bayesian inference “Learning Bayesian Statistics” His areas of expertise include Hierarchical Models, Gaussian Processes and Causal Inference. -
Are you ready to register for a 100-mile race that includes 60,000 feet of elevation gain? How about a 3000-mile race cycling across the United States in the race across America? These endurance competitions and events are amazing athletic achievements, and women are competing in these events in ever-increasing numbers. These amazing feats and the factors that have hindered and enhanced the participation of women in these endurance sports is the focus of today's stats and stories with guest Claire McKay Bowen.
Claire McKay Bowen (she/her) is a senior fellow and leads the Data Governance and Privacy Practice Area at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on developing technical and policy solutions to safely expand access to confidential data for advancing evidence-based policy-making. She also has an interest in improving science communication and ensuring everyone is responsibly represented in data. In 2024, she became an American Statistical Association Fellow “for her significant contributions in the field of statistical data privacy, leadership activities in support of the profession, and commitment to mentoring the next generation of statisticians and data scientists.” Further, she is a member of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee and several other data governance and data privacy committees as well as an adjunct professor at Stonehill College. -
Dr. Rose Marie Ward is a professor in Miami University's Department of Kinesiology & Health. She studies college student health, with a focus on both addictive/harmful behaviors (alcohol use, disordered eating, unsafe and unwanted sexual behavior) and prosocial activities (women’s leadership, life satisfaction, scholastic achievement, exercise, and athleticism).
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About 5.4 million Americans live with some form of paralysis. Sometimes that's just a temporary loss of mobility, but for the Americans whose paralysis is caused by a spinal cord injury, that loss of movement is often permanent, as there's no biological way to heal an injured spinal cord. There are efforts to see if technology might be able to help these individuals regain use of their limbs, and that's the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Dr. David Friedenberg.
Dr. Friedenberg is a Principal Data Science and Neurotechnology and the Team Lead for Machine Learning/AI in the Health Analytics group at Battelle. He's the Principal Investigator on several neurotechnology efforts developing new AI-powered technologies to help improve the lives of people living with motor impairments due to neurological injuries like spinal cord injuries and stroke. An experienced data scientist with consulting experience across several disciplines he is passionate about developing AI/ML-driven solutions to challenging problems for the betterment of humanity. -
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.
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Artists of today are still making albums, however with so much emphasis being put on streaming charts how many of today's album streams are being made up by a few hit tracks? That distinction is the focus of today's episode of Stats and Stories with guest Chris Dalla Riva.
Chris Dalla Riva is an analyst for the music streaming service Audiomack by day while spending his nights writing and recording music and writing about music for his newsletter Can’t Get Much Higher. -
For decades, college athletes could not make any money from their sports identities. In 2021 the NCAA passed an interim name image and likeness policy which now grants athletes control over those indentities. They can now be paid for autographs, personal appearances, and endorsements. The economic impact of the NCAA name image and likeness changes are the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with gues Emily Giambalvo.
Emily Giambalvo is a sports reporter focusing on data-driven projects with the enterprise and investigations team. She covered University of Maryland football and men’s basketball from 2018 to 2023, and she has contributed to The Post’s coverage of the Olympics, gymnastics and national college sports. Emily grew up in South Carolina and graduated from the University of Georgia. -
The blue ice giants in our outer solar system have unusual magnetic fields, missing what we understand as traditional north-south poles. For decades, scientists have been trying to understand why while also puzzling out what the planets are made of under their atmospheres. Some have suggested the planets may experience diamond rain others that their mantles consist of a mix of slushy water and ammonia. A new study has suggested the planets’ have layered interiors that generate their magnetic fields. The secret lives of ice giants are the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories.
Burkhard Militzer is a Professor in the Astronomy department at University of California Berkeley. His research interests include mineral physics, Interiors of giant planets, planet formation, materials at high pressure, equation of state calculations, Quantum Monte Carlo, path integral Monte Carlo, density functional methods. -
Linda J. Young is Chief Mathematical Statistician and Director of Research and Development of USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service . She oversees efforts to continually improve the methodology underpinning the Agency's collection and dissemination of data on every facet of U.S. agriculture. She works on the surveys designed to characterize agricultural activity in the US.
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