Stats + Stories

This episode features a number of interviews from the recent Royal Statistical Society International Conference from last month. Today's guests include, Iain Flint of G’s Growers talking about the IceCAM project, which helps to minimise food waste by adapting the growing programmes of iceberg lettuces according to weather predictions. We also have James Tucker, head of the Quality Centre and Methodology Advisory Service at the Office for National Statistics talking about respondent confidentiality, and data privacy and protection. As well as, Kevin Johanson from the Expert Group on Sámi Statistics based in Norway, on how the group is working on developing statistics on the Sámi people and how these statistics can lead to

Wendy Martinez has been serving as the Director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for six years. Prior to this, she served in several research positions throughout the Department of Defense. She held the position of Science and Technology Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research, where she established a research portfolio comprised of academia and industry performers developing data science products for the future Navy and Marine Corps. Wendy is also proud and grateful to have been elected as the 2020 ASA President. (Date: 9/26/20

Xiao-Li Meng, the Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics, and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Data Science Review, is well known for his depth and breadth in research, his innovation and passion in pedagogy, his vision and effectiveness in administration, as well as for his engaging and entertaining style as a speaker and writer. Meng was named the best statistician under the age of 40 by COPSS (Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies) in 2001, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for his more than 150 publications in at least a dozen theoretical and methodological areas, as well as in areas of pedagogy and professional development.

Wendy Martinez has been serving as the Director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for six years. Prior to this, she served in several research positions throughout the Department of Defense. She held the position of Science and Technology Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research, where she established a research portfolio comprised of academia and industry performers developing data science products for the future Navy and Marine Corps. She was honored by the American Statistical Association when she received the ASA Founders Award at the JSM 2017 conference. Wendy is also proud and grateful to have been elected as the 2020 ASA President.

Xiao-Li Meng, the Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics, and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Data Science Review, is well known for his depth and breadth in research, his innovation and passion in pedagogy, his vision and effectiveness in administration, as well as for his engaging and entertaining style as a speaker and writer. Meng was named the best statistician under the age of 40 by COPSS (Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies) in 2001, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for his more than 150 publications in at least a dozen theoretical and methodological areas, as well as in areas of pedagogy and professional development.

Stephen T. Ziliak is Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University and Conjoint Professor of Business and Law at the University of Newcastle-Australia. A major contributor to the American Statistical Association “Statement on Statistical Significance and P-values” (2016) he is probably best known for his book (with Deirdre N. McCloskey) on The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives (2008), showing the damage done by a culture of mindless significance testing, the history of wrong turns, and the benefits which could be enjoyed by returning to Bayesian and Guinnessometric roots.

Siddharth Suri is a computational social scientist whose research interests lie at the intersection of computer science, behavioral economics, and crowdsourcing. His current work centers around the crowd workers who power many modern apps, websites, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This work culminated in a book he coauthored with Mary L. Gray titled Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (May 2019).

Libby Pier is the Research Manager at Education Analytics, overseeing and executing EA's diverse educational research portfolio, encompassing social-emotional learning, predictive analytics, academic growth measures, human capital analytics, and program evaluation. Nichole Webster is a research analyst at Education Analytics. She examines the item properties and performance of Social and Emotional Learning surveys and estimates teacher and school performance metrics in R. She’s part of ongoing research that examines how Item Response Theory models estimate error. She studied Mathematics and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin

Yoav Benjamini is the Nathan and Lily Silver Professor of Applied Statistics at the Department of statistics and Operations Research at Tel Aviv University. He is a co-developer of the widely used and cited False Discovery Rate concept and methodology. He received the Israel Prize for research in Statistics and Economics, is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and has been elected to receive the Karl Pearson Prize of ISI this summer.

Nichole Webster is a research analyst at Education Analytics. She examines the item properties and performance of Social and Emotional Learning surveys and estimates teacher and school performance metrics in R. She’s part of ongoing research that examines how Item Response Theory models estimate error. She studied Mathematics and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin Libby Pier is the Research Manager at Education Analytics, overseeing and executing EA's diverse educational research portfolio, encompassing social-emotional learning, predictive analytics, academic growth measures, human capital analytics, and program evaluation. Prior to joining EA, Libby worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UW-Madison's Center for Women's Health Research. She earned her PhD in Educational Psychology (Learning Sciences) with a focus on quantitative methods from UW-Madison in 2017, and a Master's in Urban Education from Loyola Marymount in 2010. Libby served as an 8th, 9th, and 10th grade English teacher in Los Angeles in both a traditional public school and a charter school through Teach For America.