Stats + Stories

There's a lot of statistical information shared every day in news stories. Everything from COVID cases to economic data is Quantified help us better understand our world. But do news presentations really help us do that? And what do statisticians think about the way journalists are covering their work, that’s the topic behind this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Megan Higgs and Ashley Stee...

Alison Hedley has a PhD in Communication and Culture and holds a SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University. Her current research addresses the history of data visualization in popular journalism, focusing especially on Victorian and Edwardian Britain. She is editor of the Yellow Nineties Personography, a biographical database abo...

Recent COVID-forced move to online instruction for both K through 12 and higher-ed has come an intense discussion of best teaching practices in digital spaces. While the focus has been on teaching online, the conversation has foregrounded long-standing debates over pedagogy and practice in education. Understanding what works in the classroom is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with g...

Journalism in the United States is imagined as a public good, an institution that aids in the maintenance of democracy as it holds people in power accountable for their actions. Journalists are also tasked with helping citizens understand how their communities are run. However, that’s becoming increasingly difficult as local new rooms around the country shrink or are shuttered completely. Journali...

Almost every day we seem to get new data about the COVID crisis. Whether it’s infection rates, death rates, testing rates, false-negative rates, there’s a lot of information to cull through. Making sense of COVID data is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with Megan Price and Maria Gargiulo. Megan Price is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, Price designs st...

The work of health researchers is vitally important to the safety and well-being of people around the world, with the COVID-19 crisis making that all too clear. However, health researchers are facing a crisis of their own, a crisis of trust. It’s fueled partly by the proliferation of social media, the politicization of data, and the reluctance of some researchers to discuss their work. The issue o...

The use of statistics to improve processes and business industry government and academia is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with Deming Lecturer Award winner Nicholas Fisher. Fisher left his position as Chief Research Scientist at CSIRO  in 2001 to found ValueMetrics Australia, an R&D consultancy that carries out R&D in Performance Measurement, in which area he has consulted to a wi...

The data official statistical offices collect and generate are of vital importance to the work of national governments and international organizations. However, the work of collecting national data can be difficult and at times can be politicized, and as with so much over the last several months, the COVID pandemic has only shown how important national statistics are as well as how fraught their i...

Protestors have taken to streets across the U-S this summer in order to fight back against what they see as an unjust criminal justice system – one that treats People of Color in prejudicial and violent ways. The concern over racial bias in policing has long been a concern of activists, but there’s an increasing focus on other ways racial bias might influence decisions made in America’s courts and...

What comes to mind at the start of summer? Backyard barbecues, quality time spent, and long drive. Transportation safety is the topic of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Joel Greenhouse Joel B. Greenhouse, Ph. D., is Professor of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is an elected Fellow of the Ame...

Social media is always awash in pet videos and images, but since the COVID lockdowns it seems as though there is even more pet content to be found online as cats invade video conferences and dogs beg for even more walks. There are sometimes even calls in spaces such as Twitter for people to share pet images when someone’s having a bad day. The connection between pets and wellness is one of the foc...

When reporters cover mass shootings news outlets often struggle to find ways to cover the event that won’t inspire others to do the same thing. Something similar follows in the wake of a suicide. Journalists don’t always cover suicides in their communities but when they do one of the concerns is whether that coverage might lead to a spike in suicides after the story is out. The media’s influence o...

Across the country, protesters are taking to the streets to fight against police brutality and systemic racism. The use of force by police departments as well as the seeming militarization of many has been a concern of activists for some time. Another concern has been the use of big data in the use of surveillance technologies by departments to conduct predictive policing. Advocates for the approa...

As researchers and medical professionals struggle to get a handle on the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists struggle to tell the pandemic’s story with many news outlets increasingly turning to info graphics and data visualizations to help them do so. Visualizing data for news is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Harry Stevens. Harry Stevens joined The Washington Post as a graph...

As the COVID 19 death toll continues to rise, researchers and public health professionals around the world are working to understand just how prevalent the disease is. News stories of the last several months have talked about contact tracing and featured images of drive through COVID testing. One of the issues that has come up with testing is whether we should test people who don’t show signs of i...

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...

Latoya Jennings-Lopez hosts this special episode of Stats+Stories with the children of Howard W. Bishop middle school. Listen to Alyana and Collin ask our host John Bailer and other special guest Wendy Martinez about their careers in Statistics, and how young people can get involved early.

Lynn McDonald is a professor emerita at the University of Guelph. McDonald’s career has focused on enduring contributions as a scholar and social activist. She also served as a member of Parliament when her Non-Smokers’ Health Act of 1988 led the world in enacting legislation to establish smoke-free work and public spaces. In addition, in a labor of love, she published the definitive collection of...

Steve Pierson is director of science policy for the American Statistical Association where he works to raise the profile of statistics in policymaking and advocates on the interests of statisticians. He was previously head of government relations at the American Physical Society and associate professor of physics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Amalia Bastos is a biologist and photographer who is currently a Ph. D candidate at The University of Auckland. She is part of the Animal Minds lab and work with three different species: dogs, kea, and New Caledonian crows. Her main interest is on how evolutionary pressures have shaped the minds of different species. Her PhD thesis focuses on the signature-testing approach, which aims to identify...

Roland Geyer is Professor at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. Prior to joining the Bren School he held research positions in Germany, France, and the UK. Since 2000 he has worked with a wide range of governmental organization, trade associations, and companies on environmental sustainability issues. Roland has won multiple awards for his work, such as the International S...

Dan Cooley is a Professor or Statistics at Colorado State University and is a past member and chair of the ASA’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change Policy.  Dan’s research is primarily focuses on developing statistical methods for the study of extreme values and is largely motivated by problems in atmospheric science. Dr. Michael F. Wehner is a senior staff scientist in the Computational Researc...

Bekah McBride is a science writer and communications specialist who has worked with both companies and universities to turn data and research into applicable and actionable messages that inspire change. She holds a B.S. in Life Science Communication with an emphasis in Business from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a M.A. in Journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her work has b...

John Pullinger is the current president of International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS) and finished his five-year term as United Kingdom National Statistician, Head of the Government Statistical Service (GSS) and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority in June 2019. There, his role was to safeguard the production and publication of high quality official statistics by all depart...

Amanda Makulec is the Senior Data Visualization Lead at Excella and holds a Masters of Public Health from the Boston University School of Public Health. She worked with data in global health programs for eight years before joining Excella, where she leads teams and develops user-centered data visualization products for federal, non-profit, and private sector clients. Amanda volunteers as the Opera...