Stats + Stories

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).

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.

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.