Stats + Stories

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Bats and the Next Pandemic | Stats + Stories Episode 345 Oct 03, 2024

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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.

Throwing the Red Flag | Stats + Stories Episode 344 Sep 26, 2024

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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.

Covering the Olympics | Stats + Stories Episode 343 Sep 19, 2024

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Bo Li, is an associate professor in Sport Leadership and Management department. He teaches sport administration, sport marketing and sport public relations. His research has been mainly focused on sport digital media and branding. He has previously co-edited the book Sport and the Pandemic: Perspectives on Covid-19’s Impact on the Sport Industry, Sport Administration, and Governance and Administration of Global Sport Business. His research interests lie in the intersection of digital media, mass media, branding, and consumer behaviors. Specifically, my scholarship aims to advance our understanding of how various forms of media are used to connect with customers at different levels. He has authored over 40 peer-reviewed academic manuscripts. His works have been published in leading academic journals including Sport Management Review, Communication & Sport, Journal of Media, Culture, and Society, International Journal of Sport Marketing and Sponsorship, International Journal of Sport Communication, Sport Marketing Quarterly, International Journal of Sport Finance and Journal of Sport Media. (9/18/2024)

How the Bureau of Labor Statistics Gets its Data | Stats + Stories Episode 113 (Repost) Sep 12, 2024

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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.

Sports Analytics in the Classroom | Stats + Stories Episode 342 Sep 05, 2024

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Sports generate a lot of data among them individual player metrics, team performance data, and specific game statistics. And there are a lot of tools to crunch all those numbers. Learning to use them can be a challenge and is the focus of many sport analytics classes offered in the United States. We hear about one professor’s approach to teaching sports stats in this episode of Stats and Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories with guest Mark Glickman. Glickman is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, a Senior Lecturer on Statistics in the Harvard University Department of Statistics, and Senior Statistician at the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research. His research interests are primarily in the areas of statistical models for rating competitors in games and sports, and in statistical methods applied to problems in health services research. He served as an elected member of the American Statistical Association's Board of Directors as representative of the Council of Sections Governing Board from 2019 to 2021.

Back to School | A Stats+Stories Special Episode Aug 29, 2024

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It’s that time of year again. The summer is still in full swing, but it’s time to get bookbags on backs and butts in seats to start the new school year. To celebrate we’re rolling out another Stats+Stories throwback episode where we are going to dip into the vault and highlight some great episodes you might have missed. From Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel talking about new ways to teach statistics, to Helaine Alessio on problems that come to online test proctoring and finally Dashiell Young-Saver who is Texas based high school stats teacher on a mission to get students excited about the subject. Thank you for listening and come back next week for a new episode of Stats+Stories about sports statistics and good luck to all of our academic audience members.

Randomized Response Polling | Stats + Short Stories Episode 341 Aug 22, 2024

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Dr. James Hanley is a professor of biostatistics in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. His work has received several awards including the Statistical Society of Canada Award for Impact of Applied and Collaborative Work and the Canadian Society of Epidemiology and Biostatistics: Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Nation's Data at Risk | Stats + Stories Episode 340 Aug 15, 2024

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The democratic engine of the United States relies on accurate and reliable data to function. A year-long study of the 13 federal agencies involved in U.S. data collection, including the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the National Center for Education Statistics suggests that the nation’s statistics are at risk. The study was produced by the American Statistical Association in partnership with George Mason University and supported by the Sloan Foundation and is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories. Constance (Connie) Citro is a senior scholar with the Committee on National Statistics and an independent consultant in which capacity she worked on the project that produced A Nation’s Data at Risk. She was previously CNSTAT director from 2004-2017 and senior study director from 1986-2003. Citro was an American Statistical Association/National Science Foundation/Census Bureau research fellow and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. She served as president of the Association of Public Data Users and its representative to the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, edited the Window on Washington column for Chance magazine, and served on the Advisory Committee of the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology. In 2018, the American Statistical Association established the Links Lecture Award in honor of Citro, Robert Groves, and Fritz Scheuren. She will give the 32nd Morris Hansen Lecture in September 2024. Jonathan Auerbach is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at George Mason University. His research covers a wide range of topics at the intersection of statistics and public policy, including urban analytics, open data, and official statistics. His methodological interests include the analysis of longitudinal data, particularly for data science and causal inference. He is the current president of the Washington Statistical Society and the former science policy fellow at the American Statistical Association

What is Biocomplexity? | Stats + Stories Episode 339 Aug 08, 2024

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One thing that we always value at Stat+Stories is the story of, “How did we get here?”. Today’s episode follows our colleague, from work that she did in the federal government to now leading the charge at a biocomplexity institute. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Short Stories. Stephanie Shipp is a research professor at the Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia. She co-founded and led the Social and Decision Analytics Division in 2013, starting at Virginia Tech and moving to the University of Virginia in 2018. Dr. Shipp’s work spans topics related to using all data to advance policy, the science of data science, community analytics, and innovation. She leads and engages in local, state, and federal projects to assess data quality and the ethical use of new and traditional data sources. She is leading the development of the Curated Data Enterprise (CDE) that aligns with the Census Bureau’s modernization and transformation and their Statistical Products First approach. She is a member of the American Statistical Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics, Symposium on Data Science and Statistics (SDSS) Committee, and the Professional Issues and Visibility Council. She is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, and an American Statistical Association (ASA) Fellow. She received the ASA Founder’s award in 2022.

Robodebt | Stats + Stories Episode 338 Aug 01, 2024

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In 2016, the Australian government launched a program it said would make tracking welfare benefits easier. Instead, it falsely told hundreds of thousands of Australians they owed the government money, with some of those individuals taking their own lives as a result. Australia's robodebt tragedy is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guests Noel Cressie and Dennis Trewin. Noel Cressie is Distinguished Professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and Director of its Centre for Environmental Informatics, which is a vibrant interdisciplinary group doing research in spatio-temporal statistics, satellite remote sensing, and broader fields of environmental science; he is also Adjunct Professor at the University of Missouri and Affiliate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the USA. Noel grew up in Western Australia, received a PhD from Princeton University, and shared a career between the US and Australia. He is author and co-author of four books, three of them on spatial and spatio-temporal statistics, and of more than 300 peer-reviewed publications. His recent research involves hunting for atmospheric-carbon-dioxide sources around the world and focusing on Antarctica’s environmental future. He has won a number of awards, including the Fisher Award and Lectureship from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS), the Pitman Medal from the Statistical Society of Australia, the Barnett Award from the Royal Statistical Society, and the Matheron Award and Lecture from the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences. Noel is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, of the Royal Society of New South Wales, and of a number of other learned societies. Dennis Trewin is a pioneer of social statistics that are leading to meaningful measurement of social capital in Australia. He was the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics between 2000 and 2007, and held other senior appointments in Australia such as Electoral Commissioner and an Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University. Dennis is also a member of the Committee charged with responsibility for producing an independent report on the State of the Environment.

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