Stats + Stories

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in early March left many wondering whether the global financial system was on the precipice of a 2008 style meltdown. Just as the waters seemed to calm after that, UBS stepped in to buy Credit Suisse as that bank collapsed and as we record this regional First Republic Bank seemed to be teetering. The risks inherent to and the regulation of ban...

The close reading of texts is a methodology that's often used in humanities disciplines, as scholars seek to understand what meanings and ideas a text is designed to communicate. While such close readings have historically been done sans technology, the use of computational methods in textual analysis is a growing area of inquiry. It's also the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest...

In the latest episode of Stats+Stories, we put out a call for YOU the Stats + Stories audience to participate in our 300th episode. We have put out a data set containing various information on over 280 episodes of Stats+Stories recorded over the past decade, which we want you to use to create visualizations and tell a story with our data! statsandstories.net/contest You can submit your entries by...

Residents of East Palestine, Ohio continue to worry about the health of their community after a Norfolk Southern train derailment. The train was carrying toxic chemicals and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says more than 45,000 Animals have died as a result of the derailment. Residents are concerned that chemicals that leaked from the train and that entered the atmosphere as a result of a...

According to AARP, 70% of Americans who live to be 65 will need long term care at some point, though what kind of long term care depends upon an individual's physical, emotional, and mental health. A project at Miami University has been studying long term care and that's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Bob Applebaum. Dr. Robert Applebaum is Professor of Gerontology in the...

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 pro...

Romantic comedies are rife with plucky heroines. Small bookstore owners are being pushed out by big corporations, runaway brides, and Perpetual bridesmaids. But where are the scientists, microbiologists and engineers, and statisticians? One researcher went looking for them, which is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Veronica Carlan.  Veronica Carlan @carlan_veronica is the Lead...

Native communities around the world are looking for ways to maintain their culture and their language. Meanwhile, some colleges and universities in the U.S. are trying to come to terms with the fact that their campuses are located on what were once tribal lands. The Myaamia Center at Miami University is a partnership between the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the university which works to preserve th...

Everyone can relate to being in a rush and needing to get just one last item from the store. However, upon reaching the checkout line, after being asked the all too often refrain of, “can I get your loyalty card or phone number” you may wonder why is this information so important to a store. The annoyance and potential ramifications of giving up your data so freely is the focus of this episode of...

Stats and Stories recently marked its 250th episode with a contest. We asked you to share with us(via Twitter or email) a stat-related story with a headline you didn’t like and then a new headline that you thought was better. We had a number of great entries, including another stats haiku, but there can be only one winner and they’re joining us on this episode of Stats and Short Stories with Dan G...

In many countries in the Global South, partnerships and collaborations are crucial to moving forward projects of various kinds. A network based at the University of Colorado Boulder has facilitated the creation of statistics and data science collaboration labs in 10 countries, The LISA 2020 Global Network and it's efforts are the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guests Eric Vance and Ol...

Data have always been important to the work of journalists. from Jacob Riis is reporting on how the other half lived in late 1800s New York City, to stories about gun violence in 2022, journalists need numbers to tell their stories. But not every reporter is trained to find and work with data. For those who want to dive into investigative journalism which often depends on complicated data, learnin...

Sir Bernard Silverman is an eminent British Statistician whose career has spanned academia, central government, and public office. He will discuss his wide-ranging career in statistics with Professor Denise Lievesley, herself a distinguished British social statistician. He was President of the Royal Statistical Society in 2010 before stepping down to become Chief Scientific Adviser to the Home Off...

Dr. Dooti Roy is a people leader, global product owner and a methodology statistician at Boehringer Ingelheim (she didn’t give me where she worked in her bio so she might not want this) who enjoys developing/deploying innovative clinical research and statistical visualization tools with expertise in creating and leading dynamic cross-functional collaborations to efficiently solve complex problems....

At Stats and Stories, we love to have statisticians and journalists tell stories of their careers and give advice to inspire younger professionals and the next generation about what they can do with the power of data. However, we have yet to have a couple join us to talk about their careers and how statistics in Brazil have progressed over the past 30 years. That's the focus of this episode of Sta...

With each new wildfire season comes talk that the new season is worse than the last. With recent fires raging in the western u.s., the Australian bush, the Taiga of Siberia, and the forests of France. Many point to climate change as a cause of extreme fires, and scientists are creating more specificated ways of examining that relationship. That is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with gu...

University rankings are big business with highly ranked universities leveraging their ranking and marketing to prospective students, employees and funders. But the process of generating those rankings may not always be so sound that's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guests Elizabeth Gadd and Adrian Barnett. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd is a Research Policy Manager at Loughborough Un...

The gathering of statistics of various kinds, is vital to our understanding the world around us. But some stats can communicate sensitive data about individuals even when statistical methods a have been thoughtfully designed. The ability to keep data private is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Dr. Claire McKay Bowen. Dr. Claire McKay Bowen (@clairemkbowen)) is a principal rese...

In the past, Introduction to Statistics classes spent a lot of time covering distribution tables, teaching students to run stats by hand and focusing on statistical procedures. However, educators are continually considering new ways to teach stats, and the increasing popularity of data science makes it a more urgent prospect for some. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with gues...

Each election cycle experts appear in the news talking about polling data. Many of these experts are political scientists and are often the only contact audiences may have with political scientists. While polling research is important to the field, there are other kinds of quantitative research in political science that can get overlooked. We learned about some of them today on this episode of Sta...

Demographers study the way populations change. The things they might focus on include births and deaths, living conditions, and age distributions. In the United States, population changes are tracked nationally by the Census Bureau. A conversation with the retired chief demographer of the U.S Census Bureau with Howard Hogan is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories. Hogan is the former chief d...

Submit your entry into the Stats+Stories 250th episode celebration contest via email at statsandstories@miamioh.edu or on Twitter by following @statsandstories and tweeting at us with a link to your story and what you would do to correct its errors in 50 words or less. Winners will receive a signed copy of John and Rosemary's new book, "Statistics Behind the Headlines", as well as a Stats+Stories...

What is the nutritional status of children in your town? How many tourism and hospitality companies are in your community? Answering these questions at a small scale seems like a challenge. However, imagine scaling this to a country, with one hundred and twenty three municipalities, 26 states and a federal district. Answering these questions with survey methods is the focus of this episode of Stat...

In the late 1600s, a book was published satirizing politics in Europe. Published two decades after the end of the 30 Years' War, it focuses on the power of the Holy Roman Empire. That book's impact on statistics is the focus of this episode of stats and stories, with guest Wallace Ferguson. Wallace Ferguson has taught mathematics and statistics at Chatham and Clarendon Grammar School, Kent, Englan...

Measurement accuracy is something all quantitative researchers strive for, as you want to make sure you're measuring what you want to be measuring. When it comes to gathering gender and sex data, though measurements are complicated, beyond simply teasing apart sex and gender, there's also the imperative to ensure the language and measurement tools researchers use are inclusive of all experiences....