Happy Mathematical and Statistical Awareness Month! To celebrate, hosts Sadie and Ian decided to take a peek behind the curtain and see what it is that pure mathematicians do all day. This episode follows a conversation with University of Chicago Math Professor Benson Farb as he explains how he approaches mentoring future mathematicians and what got him into his field in the first place. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot more about luck and timing than you’d expect! Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: UChicago Math Pizza Seminar: https://math.uchicago.edu/~pizzaseminar/ Math Genealogy Tree: https://www.mathgenealogy.org/index.php Stereotype Threat Research: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-psych-073115-103235 More on Benson: https://news.uchicago.edu/profile/benson-farb Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Benson Farb: https://mathematics.uchicago.edu/people/profile/benson-farb/ This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

We're taking a short break to prepare for the rest of Season 2 and our collaboration with AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun. So stay tuned! Find our transcript here: LINK Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (instagram) IMSI.institute This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

We have another guest host this episode, with Jude Higdon. Jude is the Chief Information Officer at Bennington College and co-founder of the QSIDE Institute. Jude led the charge during IMSI’s Research Collaboration Workshop that was aimed at addressing small town policing. Using the road map laid out by the Small Town Policing Accountability (SToPA) Lab, Jude’s team developed a toolkit for procuring, structuring, and analyzing policing data in small towns that lack the resources and systems to make their own data public. By the end of a month at IMSI, Jude’s team had a prototype that can empower small community-based participatory action research. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: QSIDE Institute: https://qsideinstitute.org/ Small Town Policing Accountability previous research: https://bigdata.duke.edu/projects/small-town-policing-accountability/ Submit a Research Collaboration Workshop proposal to IMSI: https://www.imsi.institute/proposals/collaboration/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Jude Higdon: https://www.bennington.edu/about/college-leadership/jude-higdon This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Joining the helm as cohost, Bates Professor Carrie Diaz Eaton leads this week’s exploration of how to build a data science tool, not just for local activists, but with them. We begin with how the partnership between the environmental justice leadership program Nuevas Voces and Carrie’s team of interdisciplinary math researchers first met. Then, we hear from the members of Carrie’s Research Collaboration Workshop team as they worked at a breakneck pace here at IMSI to have a completed prototype by the end of a month. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Listen to Carrie’s first feature on Carry the Two: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/carrie-diaz-eaton-on-equity-in-policy-documents/id1629115184?i=1000567232994 Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council: https://wrwc.org/wp/ Nuevas Voces: https://wrwc.org/wp/nuevas-voces-graduation/ Submit a Research Collaboration Workshop proposal to IMSI: https://www.imsi.institute/proposals/collaboration/ Providence VECINA: https://math-data-justice-collaborative.github.io/fuertes-pvd/#1 Example similar to VECINA: https://chichives.com/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Carrie Diaz Eaton: @mathprofcarrie This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Sound effect from pixabay. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

What if you had a way to upload as many selfies as you wanted to instagram or facebook, and still protect yourself from facial recognition software? Turns out, that’s not a pipe dream! In fact, the SAND Lab (Security, Algorithms,Networking and Data) at the University of Chicago is developing all sorts of tools and techniques to help us protect our digital privacy. Joining us in this episode, Heather Zheng, PhD from the SAND lab, walks us through both examples of current data privacy concerns, as well as new potential threats to privacy. But don’t worry, for each concern, Heather is able to provide a solution to keep your data private. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: (Guy) Fawkes image/photo masking: http://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/ Research about tracking you through your home with wi-fi: http://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/adversarialwifi/ Research on recovering your key strokes: https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/keystroke/ Hidden Markov models explained: https://brilliant.org/wiki/hidden-markov-models/ Allyson’s episode about GPT-3: [LINK] Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Heather Zheng: https://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~htzheng/ This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

How can a teacher know if a student actually wrote their book report, or if a computer did it? Are AI writers coming for journalists’ jobs? What does it mean when a language processing model can write its own computer code upon request? These are all questions currently sparked by GPT-3, a free online natural language processing artificial intelligence by Open AI. This isn’t your dimestore chatbot. GPT-3 takes advantage of a whole new method of artificial intelligence research, called neural nets, to create plays, write code, and even roleplay as a historical figure. But what are the limitations to this kind of AI? In this episode of Carry the Two, University of Chicago professor Allyson Ettinger walks us through how GPT-3 manages to sound so human and where and how it fails in interesting ways. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Use natural language processing to talk with a TV character or historical figure: https://beta.character.ai/ Chat bot using GPT-3.5: https://chat.openai.com/chat Find out how you can chat with GPT-3: https://lifearchitect.ai/how-do-i-talk-to-gpt/ When GPT-3 accidentally lies: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063487/meta-large-language-model-ai-only-survived-three-days-gpt-3-science/ Microsoft’s chatbot that went racist: https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist Is GPT-3 a replacement or tool for journalists: https://contently.net/2022/12/15/trends/chatgpt/ Undark’s interview with GPT-3 on truth & journalism: https://undark.org/2023/01/07/interview-a-conversation-on-truth-and-fiction-with-chatgpt/ Previous Carry the Two episode on statistical language learning with Ben Reuveni: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ben-reuveni-on-statistical-learning/id1629115184?i=1000577827727 Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Allyson Ettinger: https://linguistics.uchicago.edu/people/allyson-ettinger, @AllysonEttinger This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Sound effects from pixabay. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.