Stats + Stories

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 guest Dr. Jessica McCarty. Dr. Jessica McCarty (@jmccarty_geo) is an Associate Professor of Geography and Director of the Geospatial Analysis Center at Miami University. She has 15 years' experience in applications of geospatial and data science to terrestrial and atmospheric studies. Her expertise includes wildland and prescribed fire, agriculture and food security, land-cover/land-use change, natural resources, and climate change. She has author/co-author of 27 peer-reviewed journal articles, 12 peer-reviewed conference proceedings, 3 book chapters, 4 technical reports, 3 data citations, and 1 NASA Technology Transfer. She has served as Principal Investigator and/or Co-Investigator on NASA, EPA, USDA, and NSF grants on use of remote sensing for prescribed fire, carbon emissions, air quality, LCLUC, and agriculture/food security.

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 University. She chairs the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Working Group and champions the ARMA Research Evaluation SIG. She founded the LIS-Bibliometrics Forum and The Bibliomagician Blog and was the recipient of the 2020 INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management and Leadership. Adrian Barnett is a professor of statistics who has worked for over 27 years in health and medical research. He is passionate about using the best available evidence in national health and science policy. He is particularly interested in how we generate high quality scientific evidence that is of most value to the public and politicians, and how this evidence gets translated into policy and practice. He writes about statistical issues at Median Watch.

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 research associate in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population and leads the Statistical Methods Group at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on developing and assessing the quality of differentially private data synthesis methods and science communication. In 2021, the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies identified her as an emerging leader in statistics for her technical contributions and leadership to statistics and the field of data privacy and confidentiality. She is also a member of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee and the Differential Privacy Working Group, an advisory board member of the Future of Privacy Forums, and an adjunct professor at Stonehill College.

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 guest Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel. Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel (@minebocek) is a senior lecturer at University of Edinburgh, an associate professor of the practice at Duke University, and a professional educator at RStudio. She has author of three open source statistics textbooks and is an instructor for Coursera. Her work focuses on innovation in statistics and data science pedagogy, with an emphasis on computing, reproducible research, student-centered learning, and open-source education. She works on integrating computation into the undergraduate statistics curriculum, using reproducible research methodologies and analysis of real and complex datasets. In addition to her academic position, she also works with RStudio, where her focus is primarily on education for open-source R packages as well as building resources and tools for educators teaching statistics and data science with R and RStudio. How did stats pedagogy become a focus for you? 1:00 Changes in statistics education 2:36  How has the public nature of data and statistical data affected you? 7:13 How do you get students to think about ethics when they're grabbing data? 9:28 Current practitioners 12:43  People that take one stats class 17:17 The future of this practice. 23:41

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 Stats and Stories with guest Kevin Reuning. Kevin Reuning is an assistant professor of political science at Miami University whose work focuses on political parties and social movements in the United States, and takes a particular interest in how political activity can be measured and quantified. He also maintains a website, mapping union elections in the United States.

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 demographer of the U.S. Census Bureau and studied at Princeton’s Office of Population Research, and its School of Public Affairs. He then spent two years teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam and working on the Tanzanian census. He joined the Census in 1979. He worked on household surveys, business surveys, and the population census. He led the statistical design of the 2000 Census. He served as an expert witness in Utah v Evans, in which the Supreme Court considered the use of imputation in the Census 2000. He served as Associate Director for Demographic Programs and later as Census Bureau’s Chief Demographer. He taught as an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Statistics of George Washington University. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He was awarded the 2018 Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award. He retired from federal service in 2018.

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 branded coffee mug, and more along with a chance to be on the show! Submit your entries by October 31st and we will announce a winner on the first episode of November.

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 Stats+Stories with guest Pedro and Denise Silva. Pedro Luis do Nascimento Silva - Statistics from the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics Association (1988) and Doctor in Statistics - University of Southampton (1996). He is a Researcher at the National School of Statistical Sciences. He has extensive experience in the following areas of Statistics: sampling and research methods, analysis of complex sample data, household sample surveys, variance estimation, calibration estimators, data criticism and imputation, estimation for small domains, sample surveys in the evaluation of public policies, and official statistics. He was president of the International Institute of Statistics (2015-2017). Denise Britz do Nascimento Silva is a retired and voluntary Principal Researcher at the National School of Statistical Sciences (ENCE) of the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE), and Senior Associate Researcher at the Society for the Development of Scientific Research (SCIENCE). PhD. in Statistics (University of Southampton, 1997). I am an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), an associate editor of the Statistical Journal of the IAOS and the Revista Brasileira de Estatística, and was President (2019-2021) of the International Association of Survey Statisticians (IASS). My main areas of interest are official/public statistics, survey methods, statistical modeling of survey data, small-area estimation, and statistical education.

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, England since 1994. He writes book reviews for the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications, which are published in their journal, ‘Mathematics Today’. His interests include statistical etymology and his article ‘Microscopium statisticum and the etymology of statistics’ was published in the February edition of Significance. Ferguson is currently working on a follow on article, ‘Literature, Politics and the Framing of the State, 1300 – 1648’. He was a member of The Royal Statistical Society History of Statistics committee from 2018 until this year.

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. That's the focus of this episode of stats and stories with guests Dooti Roy and Suzanne Thornton. 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. She is currently focused on research and methodological applications of Bayesian statistics, artificial intelligence and machine learning on clinical efficacy analyses, patient adherence, and dose-finding. She is passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion, mentoring, cross-cultural collaborations, and competent leadership development. She unwinds with painting, reading, traveling and heavy metal. Suzanne Thornton professor of Statistics at Swarthmore College, a liberal arts undergraduate-only institution. As an educator, she strives to teach students to understand statistics as the language of science and prepare them to become stewards of the discipline. In 2020 she chaired an ASA presidential working group on LGBTQ+ representation and inclusion in the discipline and earlier this year, she was appointed to a three year term to serve on the National Advisory Committee for the US Census.