Stats + Stories

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Live From USCOTS 2023 Part 2 | Stats + Stories Episode 289 Aug 03, 2023

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Kelly Spoon a tenured faculty member at San Diego Mesa College. She teaches mathematics and statistics within the Mathematics department. She’s had a number of different roles on campus and within my department, including STEM Professional Learning Coordinator and is involved in statistics education and focused on culturally responsive teaching. Amy Hogan is an NYC high school teacher. Currently teaching AP Statistics, Math Analysis (sophomore math team), and Algebra 2. She is involved with stats education at the K-12 level with the ASA and NCTM, and served on the committee for USCOTS 2023. Daniel Kaplan is a nationally recognized college professor in Statistics, Data Science, and Applied Mathematics. Author of multiple university-level textbooks, award winning teacher and curriculum developer. Strong innovator in teaching with professional-level software and author of several R packages for teaching data science, statistics, and calculus.

Live From USCOTS 2023 Part 1 | Stats + Stories Episode 288 Jul 27, 2023

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The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education, aka CAUSE has held the United States Conference on teaching statistics, also known as USCOTS every other year since 2005. This conference enables teachers of statistics to exchange ideas and discover how to improve their teaching. The theme of this year's conference was communicating with and about data, a topic near and dear to us on the Stats and Stories podcast. Two sub-themes are explored as part of this conference, helping students to communicate the process and results of their statistical analysis, and helping teachers to communicate with students in order to develop their understanding of statistical concepts and their ability to implement statistical methods for conversations with leaders and speakers at the United States Conference on teaching statistics were recorded on site. And we are happy to feature these in a collection of episodes of Stats and Stories.

Measuring the Impact of Universal Basic Income | Stats + Stories Episode 287 Jul 20, 2023

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What is the best way to support people living in extreme poverty? Could unconditional cash transfers and universal basic income be viable options? How can we know if such programs will work? Today's episode of stats and stories focuses on addressing the needs of people living in extreme poverty with Miriam Laker. Dr. Miriam Laker is the Global Director of Research at GiveDirectly and a Senior Research Scientist and Epidemiologist with nearly two decades of experience conducting research. Amongst her extensive experience, she led the design of the evaluation plans for GiveDirectly’s recently launched Yemen Refugees program; the learning agenda for large cash for refugees in Rwanda, and the evaluation of cash transfers in a disaster (floods and landslides) response in Uganda. She was also involved in a recently concluded randomized controlled trial evaluation of the impacts of large lump sum cash transfers on refugee and host households in Uganda.

FIFA 2.0 and Women's World Cup Bid | Stats + Stories Episode 286 Jul 13, 2023

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The Women’s World Cup is about to kick off in Australia and New Zealand with the defending champion U.S. Women’s national team once again the favorite to win the whole thing. They will have to make it past the English, Spanish, and German sides though, before they raise the world cup trophy high. A new book new out now explores the tournament with guest Adam Beissel. Adam Beissel (@ExtraBeissHit) is a professor of sports leadership and management at Miami University. His primary research interests include: the political economy of Sport Mega-Events; Global Politics of International Sport; Sport Stadiums and Urban Development; Social and Economic (in)justice in College Sport; Sports Labor Markets and Global Athletic Migration. Beissel is currently working on two interconnected and interdisciplinary research projects critically examining the cultural and political economies of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup joint hosted by Australia and New Zealand and the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup joint hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Getting Better Data on Where We Live | Stats + Stories Episode 285 Jul 06, 2023

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Where do you live? Who are your neighbors? Do you rent or own? What housing is available in your community? Today’s episode of stats and stories focuses on how and why we want to understand Americans’ experience with housing, with guest Dr. Emily Molfino. Dr. Emily Molfino is the Special Assistant to the Chief Scientist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Her work focuses on improving data dissemination and the use of administrative data for the Census. While previously at the Census, Dr. Molfino worked extensively on modernizing the American Housing Survey using administrative data and process improvements. During this time, Dr. Molfino also produced research on the use of housing administrative data, which was published in Cityscape during her work at HUD.

Statistics Behind the Headlines: Investigating Series Binge-Watching | Stats + Stories Episode 284 Jun 29, 2023

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How do you learn about what's going on in the world? Did a news headline grab your attention? Did a news story report on recent research? What do you need to know to be a critical consumer of the news you read? If you are looking to start developing your data self-defense and critical news consumption skills, this book is for you! It reflects a long-term collaboration between a statistician and a journalist to shed light on the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. The only prerequisite for enjoying this book is an interest in developing the skills and insights for better understanding news stories that incorporate quantitative information.

How People Interpret Charts | Stats + Stories Episode 283 Jun 22, 2023

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The news landscape is continuously in flux as new media technologies are developed and audience needs shift. This mix of new tech and new needs, has made it important that audiences be able to understand quantitive information. A research project between Knology and PBS NewsHour is studying just how people consume news and numbers. That project is the focus of this episode of Stats & Stories with guests Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein and Laura Santhanam. Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein is a linguistic anthropologist who leads the media research at Knology, as well as Associate Editor of Public Anthropologies at American Anthropologist. They lead Knology's participatory collaborations with news organizations, including PBS NewsHour. Their research interests center on the relationship between scientific authority and questions of epistemic and probabilistic certainty. Their doctoral research focused on media circulation and socialization into the global community of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Laura Santhanam is the Health Reporter and Coordinating Producer for Polling for the PBS NewsHour, where she has also worked as the Data Producer. Santhanam uses narrative and numbers to tell stories. Her work at the NewsHour merged her career as a newspaper reporter at the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Arizona Republic with her work as a media analyst at Pew Research Center. She previously worked as a senior climate researcher at Media Matters for America, where she wrote blogs that examined climate change and managed data-driven projects on the media’s coverage of issues related to energy and the environment.

Crime in the Community | Stats + Stories Episode 282 Jun 15, 2023

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A recent blog post in The Hill stated, “reliable research on data and crime is more valuable than ever.” With more and more headlines about spiking crime rates, the question has to be asked. Do data back that up? Who better to answer that question than our guests who coordinate agencies to give us an accurate assessment of these questions, Nancy La Vigne Alexis Piquero. Nancy La Vigne is the Director of the National Institute of Justice. She’s a nationally recognized criminal justice policy expert and former nonprofit executive whose expertise ranges from policing and corrections reform to reentry, criminal justice technologies and evidence-based criminal justice practices. Alexis Piquero is the Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. He leads the Bureau’s activities on a range of data collection on matters related to crime and the justice system. Piquero is a nationally and internationally recognized criminologist with more than 25 years of experience.

Investigating Medical Murders | Stats + Stories Episode 281 Jun 08, 2023

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Death happens in medical settings for all kinds of reasons. However, when a death is unexpected, it can leave loved ones grieving and investigators wondering whether it was a case of medical misconduct, or medical murder. When investigators decide to bring a case to trial, they often rely on statistics to make their argument. The Royal Statistical Society released a report this year about such cases, which is the focus of this episode of stats and stories with guest William C. Thompson. William C. Thompson is Professor Emeritus of Criminology, Law, and Society; Psychology and Social Behavior at the UCI School of Social Ecology interested in human factors associated with forensic science evidence, including contextual and cognitive bias in forensic analysis and the communication of scientific findings to lawyers and juries. He has written about the strengths and limitations of various types of forensic science evidence, particularly DNA evidence, and about the ability of lay juries to evaluate evidence.

The Labour Market Impact of Brexit | Stats + Stories Episode 280 Jun 01, 2023

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With Brexit and the United Kingdom’s severing of many formal connections to the European Union have come economic shocks. Trade between the two has become more complicated. Travel has become more difficult. The labor market could also take a beating because of Brexit and that’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Kristina Sargent. Sargent is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Middlebury College. Her research is focused on macroeconomic modeling, usually in search & matching and international migration. Her current work focuses on the relationships between migration and labor markets, women's labor force participation, the gig economy, and the impacts of trade and automation on labor markets.

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