The Stats + Stories Team

Stats + Stories

Statistics need Stories to give them meaning. Stories need Statistics to give them credibility. Every Thursday John Bailer & Rosemary Pennington get together with a new, interesting guest to bring you the Statistics behind the Stories and the Stories behind the Statistics.

Author

The Stats + Stories Team

Category

Education

Podcast website

statsandstories.net

Latest episode

Jul 9, 2026

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Episodes

How Autocrats Use Statistics | Stats + Stories Episode 92 18.04.2019

Arturas Rozenas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at New York University. He was a National Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford. His research focuses on building theoretical models of authoritarian politics and testing them using natural experiments, field experiments, and machine learning tools. At NYU, he teaches courses on comparative politics and advanced statistical m...

Making Forensic Science Scientific | Stats + Stories Episode 91 11.04.2019

Dr. Alicia Carriquiry is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a Professor of Statistics at Iowa State University. She serves as Director and lead investigator for the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence. The NIST Center of Excellence’s mission is to increase the scientific rigor of forensic science through improved statistical applications. Dr. Carriqu...

So What is RT Exactly? | Stats + Stories Episode 90 03.04.2019

Megan Metzger is a Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research at the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi) Program at Stanford University. Before coming to Stanford, she completed a PhD in Politics at NYU as a member of the Social Media and Political Participation Lab and was a Postdoctoral scholar in Russian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Megan’s research is focused on...

Understanding Conflict Resolution | Stats + Stories Episode 89 28.03.2019

Dr. Sara Cobb has a Ph. D. in Communication (UMASS Amherst) and is the Drucie French Cumbie Chair at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) at George Mason University, where she was, from 2001-2009, the dean/director. In her current role as faculty she teaches and conducts research on the relationship between narrative and conflict. She is also the Director of the Center for the S...

How to Identify Russian Bots | Stats + Stories Episode 88 21.03.2019

Joshua A. Tucker is Professor of Politics, affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, and affiliated Professor of Data Science at New York University. He is the Director of NYU’s Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia, a co-Director of the NYU Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) laboratory, and a co-author/editor of the award-winning politics and policy blog The Monkey Ca...

Making Statistics Reporting Impactful and Interesting | Stats + Stories Episode 87 14.03.2019

Liberty Vittert is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and on leave from her position at the University of Glasgow as the Mitchell Lecturer. She will be a Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University in the Department of Statistics beginning summer of 2019. She is a graduate of MIT as well as Le Cordon Blue Paris and the University of Glasgow. Her c...

The U.N. and Statistics | Stats + Stories Episode 86 07.03.2019

The U.N. and Statistics | Stats + Stories Episode 86 by The Stats + Stories Team

Tracking Health Over Time | Stats + Stories Episode 85 28.02.2019

Dr. Lloyd Edwards is Professor and Chair of Biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Edwards has an extensive background in collaborating with researchers in a broad range of areas in biomedical research, including cardiovascular disease, cystic fibrosis, cancer, aging, pediatrics, and minority health. His primary area of applied statistical research relates to the analysis of...

Multiple Systems Estimations Explained | Stats + Stories Episode 84 21.02.2019

Megan Price is the executive director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), and designs strategies and methods for statistical analysis of human rights data for projects in a variety of locations including Guatemala, Colombia, and Syria. She has contributed analyses submitted as evidence in two court cases in Guatemala and has served as the lead statistician and author on three UN repor...

Mapping Out Disease | Stats + Stories Episode 83 14.02.2019

Lance A. Waller, Ph. D. is Rollins Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. He is a member of the National Academy of Science Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics and has served on National Academies Committees on applied and theoretical statistics, cancer near nuclear facilities, geographic assessments of...

How To Become a Data Scientist | Stats + Stories Episode 82 07.02.2019

Julia Silge is a data scientist at Stack Overflow, with a PhD in astrophysics and an abiding love for Jane Austen. She is both an international speaker and a real-world practitioner focusing on data analysis and machine learning practice. She is the author of Text Mining with R, with her coauthor David Robinson. She loves making beautiful charts and communicating about technical topics with divers...

Getting Health and Science Reporting Right | Stats + Stories Episode 81 31.01.2019

Christie Aschwanden is the author of GOOD TO GO: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery and the lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight. Her new podcast, Emerging Form  launches in mid-February. Find her on Twitter @CragCrest.

The Best Way to Rank Everyone | Stats + Stories Episode 80 24.01.2019

Mark Glickman, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, is Senior Lecturer on Statistics at Harvard University, and Senior Statistician at the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, a VA Center of Innovation.  He is well-known for his work in games and sports, having created the Glicko and Glicko-2 rating systems that are widely used in online gaming.

Analyzing Art Through Text Mining | Stats + Stories Episode 79 17.01.2019

Julia Silge is a data scientist at Stack Overflow, with a PhD in astrophysics and an abiding love for Jane Austen. She is both an international speaker and a real-world practitioner focusing on data analysis and machine learning practice. She is the author of Text Mining with R, with her coauthor David Robinson. She loves making beautiful charts and communicating about technical topics with divers...

How to Teach an Intro to Stats Class | Stats + Short Stories Episode 78 10.01.2019

Mark Hansen is a professor of journalism where he also serves as the Director of the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Founded in 2012, the Brown Institute is a bi-coastal collaboration between Columbia Journalism School and the School of Engineering at Stanford University -- its mission is to explore the interplay between technology and story.  Prior to joining Columbia...

What’s Going on With This Graph? | Stats + Stories Episode 77 03.01.2019

Sharon Hessney is a veteran K-12 math teacher and writer, moderator, and coordinator of What's Going On With this Graph? WGOWTG is a free, weekly online feature, is a partnership of the New York Times Learning Network and the American Statistical Association.

The Statistics of the Year | Stats + Stories Episode 76 27.12.2018

David Spiegelhalter is Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, and President of the Royal Statistical Society.

Why Should You Care if a Statistical Agency is Being Reorganized? | Stats + Stories Episode 75 20.12.2018

Lisa LaVange and Ron Wasserstein appear in this episode. Lisa LaVange, PhD, is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her role as associate chair, she coordinates development of the data science curriculum at the Gillings School. She is also director of the department’s C...

Using Data to Protect Human Rights | Stats + Stories Episode 74 13.12.2018

Megan Price is the executive director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), and designs strategies and methods for statistical analysis of human rights data for projects in a variety of locations including Guatemala, Colombia, and Syria. She has contributed analyses submitted as evidence in two court cases in Guatemala and has served as the lead statistician and author on three UN repor...

Better Bayes Winner Revealed | Stats and Stories Episode 73 06.12.2018

Stephen T. Ziliak is Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University and Conjoint Professor of Business and Law at the University of Newcastle-Australia. A major contributor to the American Statistical Association “Statement on Statistical Significance and P-values” (2016) he is probably best known for his book (with Deirdre N. McCloskey) on The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Er...

Bootstrapping an International Prize | Stats and Stories Episode 72 04.12.2018

Brad Efron is Max H. Stein Professor of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Statistics at Stanford University, and Professor of Biostatistics with the Department of Biomedical Data Science in the Stanford School of Medicine; he serves as Co-director of the undergraduate Mathematical and Computational Sciences Program administered by the Department of Statistics. He has held visiting faculty a...

Coal Mining and Fact Finding | Stats and Stories Episode 71 29.11.2018

Jonny Jacobsen is a Paris based English journalist. Studying for an MA in Data Journalism. Still tracking French politics, culture, international affairs.

Understanding Data in the Digital Age | Stats and Stories Episode 70 15.11.2018

Mark Hansen is a professor of journalism where he also serves as the Director of the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Founded in 2012, the Brown Institute is a bi-coastal collaboration between Columbia Journalism School and the School of Engineering at Stanford University -- its mission is to explore the interplay between technology and story.  Prior to joining Columbia...

Voter Rolls and Big Data | Stats and Stories Episode 69 01.11.2018

Matt Dempsey is the data editor at the Houston Chronicle. He worked on projects involving wildfires, state pensions, and the chemical industry. His passion for public records frequently leads to disclosure of data from all levels of government. His series Chemical Breakdown won the 2016 IRE Innovation award and the National Press Foundation's "Feddie" award. His work was a key part of the Chronicl...

The Fab Formula | Stats and Stories Episode 68 18.10.2018

Mark Glickman, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, is Senior Lecturer on Statistics at Harvard University, and Senior Statistician at the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, a VA Center of Innovation.  He is well-known for his work in games and sports, having created the Glicko and Glicko-2 rating systems that are widely used in online gaming.  Mark co-org...

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