Stats + Stories

Earth day was launched in 1970 in the aftermath of several environmental disasters in the publication of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring". It was designed to help raise awareness of environmental issues and has since grown into a global event. With this year's Earth Day taking out a particular urgency in light of the most recent UN Climate Report. But what goes into the scientific research that informs some this activism? What statistical tools are used to better understand the health of our environment. That's the focus of this episode of staffs and stories with guest Philip Dixon. Philip Dixon is a professor of statistics at Iowa State University. Dixon research interests include developing and evaluating statistical methods to answer interesting biological questions. Some of his current projects are developing non-parametric estimates of prediction distributions, modeling physical activity data, and developing model-based visualizations of species composition data.

Rosemary and John both have a passion for teaching. Their experience with classes ranges from mentored studies with a few students, to face-to-face classes with close to 100 students. Recently online classes that might be held synchronously or asynchronously with classes somewhere in between. What if you wanted to offer classes too many more students, who might be based anywhere around the world. Teaching at scale is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Kristin Sainani (née Cobb). Kristin Sainani(née Cobb)(@KristinSainani) is a professor at Stanford University. She teaches statistics and writing; works on statistical projects in sports medicine; and writes about health, science and statistics for a range of audiences. She authored the health column Body News for Allure magazine for a decade. She is the statistical editor for the journal Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation; and has authored a statistics column, Statistically Speaking, for this journal since 2009. She is also the associate editor for statistics at Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. She teaches the popular Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Writing in the Sciences on Coursera, and also offers an online medical statistics certificate program through the Stanford Center for Professional Development. She was the recipient of the 2018 Biosciences Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching at Stanford University.

No matter how careful a researcher or statistician is there's the possibility that an error made exists in reported data. The trick as a reader is figuring out how to identify errors and then understand what they might mean. Learning how to be a statistical detective as a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Kristin Sainani. Kristin Sainani(née Cobb)(@KristinSainani) is a professor at Stanford University. She teaches statistics and writing; works on statistical projects in sports medicine; and writes about health, science and statistics for a range of audiences. She authored the health column Body News for Allure magazine for a decade. She is the statistical editor for the journal Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation; and has authored a statistics column, Statistically Speaking, for this journal since 2009. She is also the associate editor for statistics at Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. She teaches the popular Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Writing in the Sciences on Coursera, and also offers an online medical statistics certificate program through the Stanford Center for Professional Development. She was the recipient of the 2018 Biosciences Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching at Stanford University.

Meteorologists go to school to be able to predict the weather accurately, but for some people, weather prediction is a hobby. Maybe they have a trick knee that hurts when it rains or perhaps they know when a storm is coming by how the birds at their feeders are behaving. Some lucky folks have pets that can help them figure out what the weather is going to do and that’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Conner Jackson. Conner Jackson is a Research Instructor in the Department of Biostatistics and Informatics at the Colorado School of Public Health. He serves as the chair of the Education Committee for the Center for Innovative Design and Analysis and teaches a 6-week short course about statistics and data science to bench scientists. His research focuses on the analysis of correlated data, largely in the context of infectious diseases. Timestamps: How did this come about? (1:40) How did you frame this project? (4:40) How do you know, he's predicting rain?(8:29) So how did it work out? (11:40) Conner’s writing style (15:24) Has this influenced your other work? (20:42)

The utility of standardized testing is under debate in the US with opponents of their use in K-12 suggesting educators are now being forced to teach to tests. In higher education, there's been a push to abandon the use of standardized tests in admissions processes. But if we throw out standardized tests completely, are we throwing away a tool that still has some value? That's a question framing this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Howard Wainer. Howard Wainer is a statistician and research scientist with a specialization is the use of graphical methods for data analysis and communication, robust statistical methodology, and the development and application of generalizations of item response theory. After serving on the faculty of the University of Chicago, a period at the Bureau of Social Science Research during the Carter Administration, and 21 years as Principal Research Scientist in the Research Statistics Group at Educational Testing Service. He has authored more than 20 books, John’s favorite of which is "Truth or Truthiness: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction by Learning to Think like a Data Scientist".

Data Journalism is a hot topic in the news business. Reporters working in diverse media and diverse markets are increasingly being asked to work with data. What exactly makes for good data journalism and what does a reporter need to understand to use data well. Those are a few of the questions discussed on The Data Journalism Podcast and that is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guests Alberto Cairo and Simon Rogers. Alberto Cairo is a journalist and designer, and the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami. He is also the director of the visualization program at UM’s Center for Computational Science. He has been head of information graphics at media publications in Spain and Brazil. He is the author of several books including his upcoming, How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter About Visual Information, Cairo currently consults with companies and institutions like Google and the Congressional Budget Office, and has provided visualization training to the European Union, Eurostat, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Army National Guard, and many others. Simon Rogers is an award-winning data journalist, writer and speaker. Author of ‘Facts are Sacred‘, published by Faber & Faber in the UK, China and South Korea. He has also written a range of infographics for children books from Candlewick. Data editor on the News Lab team at Google, based in San Francisco, he is director of the Data Journalism Awards and teaches Data Journalism at Medill-Northwestern University in San Francisco and has taught at U Cal Berkeley Journalism school.

Impacting statistical and data science communites is aspiration that many of us share. Outlets for such impact include work environments where we may collaborate with interdisciplinary teams. Other newer outlets are podcasting in a variety of publishing platforms. Today we will explore the origin story of such a contributor with guest Roger Peng. Roger D. Peng (@rdpeng) is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab. His research focuses on the development of statistical methods for addressing environmental health problems and he has made major contributions to our understanding of the health effects of indoor and outdoor air pollution.

Impacting the statistical data science communities has an aspiration many of us share. Outlets for such impact include work environments where we may collaborate with interdisciplinary teams as well as other newer outlets such as podcasting and a variety of publishing platforms. Today we will explore the origin story of such a contributor in Hilary Parker. Hilary Parker (@hspter) is a Data Scientist, previously of Stitch Fix, Etsy, and the 2020 Biden for President Campaign. Her work focuses on the intersection of data science and product, from deeply understanding users to designing new experiences that depend on innovative data pipelines and client interactions.

Since the 1990’s people have been trying to figure out who’s the best friend. Is it Chandler because of his dry wit? Phoebe because of her unabashed enthusiasm? Joey because his loyalty? Well, leave it to statistics to give us a firm answer. Who’s the best friend from the show Friends is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Mathias Basner Mathias Basner is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. His primary research interests include the effects of sleep loss on cognition, population studies on sleep time and waking activities, the effects of noise on sleep and health, and astronaut behavioral health on long-duration space missions. Occasionally, he likes to take on odd projects like running a quantitative analysis on who was the best friend on the TV series Friends, or using 150 year-old data to investigate how sounds affect sleep. Check out the full article on Significance - https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1740-9713.01574

From Florence Nightingale to David Cox we hear at Stats and Stories love tales of the careers of statisticians who made an impact on the world. Yes, friends in nursing, we claim Florence as part of statistics too. While those two pioneers are no longer with us, Jana Asher is here with us today in this episode of Stats and Short Stories. Jana Asher is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Slippery Rock University. She is also a Service-Learning Associate of the Office for Community-Engaged Learning at SRU, as well as outside of work, she is a member of the board of directors for the Pittsburgh Interfaith Evolutions Corporation (PIE), a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading interfaith understanding. Her research interests include questionnaire design, survey methods, record linkage, history of statistics, community-engaged education, and statistics education as well as her work with human rights and sexual violence. Within the ASA, she is currently a member of the Committee on International Relations and the Program Chair for the Section on Survey Research Methods.