Stats + Stories

Linda J. Young is Chief Mathematical Statistician and Director of Research and Development of USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service . She oversees efforts to continually improve the methodology underpinning the Agency's collection and dissemination of data on every facet of U.S. agriculture. She works on the surveys designed to characterize agricultural activity in the US.

After Hurricane Helene left a path of destruction from Florida through North Carolina in 2024 you may not expect to see a lot of little Helene's in kindergarten rosters 6 years from now. But what names are emerging, and why? Will popular songs or singers be influencing name choices? If so, will lots of little Taylors be on our hypothetical kindergarten roster 6 years in the future. What influences baby names and what has changed over the decades is the focus of today's episode of Stats and Stories with guest Chris Dalla Riva talking about his story in Significance magazine. 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.

Trees have long been imagined as the earth’s lungs inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling the oxygen needed to support life. That life, too, is important for sustaining the earth. One scholar suggests that the animals that fill the planet’s landscapes serve as earth’s heart and arteries without them, the earth would be little more than a barren rock. The way that animals make our world is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, Joe Roman is a conservation biologist, marine ecologist, and editor ’n’ chief of Eat The Invaders. Winner of the 2012 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for Listed: Dispatches from America’s Endangered Species Act, Roman has written for the New York Times, Science, Audubon, New Scientist, Slate, and other publications. Like many of the animals he studies, Roman is a free-range biologist. He has worked at Harvard University, Duke University Marine Lab, University of Iceland, University of Havana, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the University of Vermont, where he is a fellow and writer in residence at the Gund Institute for Environment.

Jill Leyland represents the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) on the UK National Statistician’s “Advisory Panel on Consumer Prices – Stakeholder”. Together with John Astin she wrote the 2015 paper “Towards a Household Inflation Index” (since updated) which the ONS used as a starting point for the development of the Household Costs Indices. From 2009 to 2012 she was a Vice President of the RSS. She chaired its committee which developed RSS policy towards official statistics from 2008 to 2012 and its organising committee for the Excellence in Official Statistics Award from 2010 to 2016. Jill was awarded the Society’s West Medal for services to Official Statistics in 2018. She has been an Expert Witness on inflation measurement and is a Fellow of the Society of Professional Economists. In the past she worked, among other organisations, for the World Gold Council, the OECD, the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Government Statistical Service.

The costumes are ready and the annual opportunity to go out and harass your neighbors to get candy is once again upon us. Yes, it's time for Halloween. And along with Halloween comes the worry, the concern the fear that in fact, someone will be poisoning my kid’s candy. This is something that has lived with us for decades and we have someone today that will help us investigate this mystery on this episode of Stats and Short Stories with guest Joel Best. Joel Best is a Professor Of Sociology And Criminal Justice At The University Of Delaware. His writing focuses on understanding how and why we become concerned with particular issues at particular moments in time–why we find ourselves worried about road rage one year, and identity theft a year or so later. He’s written about the ways bad statistics creep into public debates, and about dubious fears, such as the mistaken belief that poisoned Halloween candy poses a serious threat to our kids. Check out his books Damned Lies and Statistics, More Damned Lies and Statistics, Stat-Spotting.

A journalist, statistician and sound engineer walk into a bar. Well, well, actually, to a studio to record a podcast. Comedians have been a source of great amusement and delight over generations. Popular comedians can earn a great deal from their live shows. In 2023 billboard reported that Kevin Hart earned 67, and a half 1 million dollars from 82 shows with 631,000 tickets sold. Comedies are also a popular genre for television and movies. One of the most successful shows, Seinfeld, created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David ran from 1989 to 1998. Have you ever noticed an echo of one of your favorite comedians from the past in the work of a comedian today that’s the topic of this week’s episode of Stats+Stories with guest Sachin Date. Sachin Date works for VitalEdge Technologies and has, over his career, worked in two research labs, three software companies including two product companies, and in a classroom. He has built and delivered all kinds of software including massively distributed discrete-time simulations, data science stacks, a new programming language, and dozens of mobile apps, including the world’s first Napster app for Blackberries. Along the way, Sachin taught 100 liberal arts majors how to program in BASIC and built a mobile applications practice from scratch.

Powerball, Mega Millions Cash for Life and more. Missouri offers many games of chance that have potential benefits for the players and guaranteed benefits for the State. In fact, the Missouri Lottery has contributed about 3 to 4% of the annual State funding for public education in the State of Missouri, more than 8 billion dollars to the State since 1986. These games describe the chances that a player will win a given game, often using calculations common in a probability class, such as permutations and combinations. So what happens if you check the calculations and you find that the calculations are not correct. A tale of lottery calculations, checked and fixed, is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories. Dr. Matthew McIntosh is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Missouri. Before transitioning into academia, Dr. McIntosh spent nearly three decades in clinical research, bringing valuable real-world insights to his teaching and research. In the Spring of 2023, he developed the Keno Project, an initiative aimed at correcting the displayed odds of winning the Keno lottery game in state lotteries, with a focus on engaging undergraduate students in statistical research. The project's first manuscript has been accepted for publication in Significance magazine. His research interests include power analysis, sample size determination, and promoting undergraduate research in statistics. Dr. McIntosh’s recent publications in sample size calculations focus on multiple linear regression and multivariate one-sided hypothesis tests. In 2018, outside his university work, Dr. McIntosh created statisticsmatt, a YouTube channel that offers tutorials and educational content for both undergraduate and graduate statistics students.  Joseph is a senior studying Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Mathematics at the University of Missouri. Since his sophomore year, he has contributed to the Keno Project, using statistical models to derive accurate odds for the lottery game Keno, addressing discrepancies often found on state lottery playslips and websites. His work, which has been accepted for publication in Significance magazine, marks a key milestone in his academic journey. As an active member of the Mizzou Racing team, Joseph helps design and build a formula-style car from the ground up, gaining hands-on experience in motorsport engineering. This aligns with his goal of pursuing a career in motorsport, with the ultimate aim of working in Formula 1. He has also completed several engineering internships, honing his technical skills in various areas of the field.  Gary G. McIntosh, CLU has for the past 15 years of semi-retirement, has dedicated his efforts to establishing Allen County’s Your Community Foundation, where he currently serves as an active advisor. His team focuses on fostering community engagement and promoting growth through education and collaboration.He has held leadership roles in several organizations, including the Jaycees, Chamber of Commerce, and as both City and County Commissioner. He has also served as an at-large board member for School District 257 and as a trustee for Allen Community College.

How important is it for businesses to increase their profits each year or offer fair wages to workers of all types? How do you think businesses are doing in these areas or, even in other areas, such as operating in a way that is sustainable for the environment and the planet? A Gallup poll of more than 5700 people provided responses to these questions and it was natural to ask how these questions might be connected and whether the pattern of connection differed between groups. Using networks to understand the connection between opinions about how businesses function is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guests Dr. Moinak Bhaduri and Bahareh Zahirodini. Dr. Moinak Bhaduri is an assistant professor at Bently University and studies spatio-temporal Poisson processes and others like the self-exciting Hawkes or log Dr. Gaussian Cox processes that are natural generalizations. His primary interest includes developing change-detection algorithms in systems modeled by these stochastic processes, especially through trend permutations. His research has found applications in computer science, finance, reliability and repairable systems, geoscience, and oceanography. Follow some of Moinak's work using the links below. Bahareh Zahirodini, MSBA, is a research assistant working alongside Dr. Moinak Bhaduri at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Bentley University in Massachusetts. Her research interests lie in financial modeling with an emphasis on social issues. Bahareh served as a research and teaching assistant and as a trading room analyst at the Hughey Center for Financial Services at Bentley. (10/10/2024)

James J. Cochran is associate dean for research with the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College. He is also professor of statistics and the Rogers-Spivey Research Fellow. Ryan McNeill is the London-based deputy editor for the Reuters global data team. During his more than 10 years at Reuters, he has worked on investigations revealing underground markets for adopted children, America’s failure to prepare for sea-level rise, failures by governments across the US to stop the spread of antibiotic resistant infections, the scale of Africa’s illicit gold flows to Dubai, how and where humans are raising the risk of zoonotic spillover around the globe, and ethnic cleansing in Sudan. In 2024, he was part of teams that won two Overseas Press Club of America Awards, using satellite imagery and remote sensing methods to document human rights violations – such as the burning of villages and documentation of mass graves in Darfur – and reveal how humans are raising the risk of another global pandemic.

A long pass down the sideline is caught in bounds. Or was it? The referees ruled it a catch, but the opposing team was unconvinced. In the NFL there's a way to challenge a referee call that comes with a potential risk which is the focus of this week's episode of Stats+Stories. Dr. Mike Orkin is a Professor of Statistics Emeritus at California State University, where he was a professor and chair of the statistics department for many years before becoming a consultant and a nationally known authority on probability and gambling games. Since then he has appeared in numerous forms of media ranging from CBS Evening News, NBC’s Dateline, a Google Tech Talk series as well as authored serval books.