Newsrooms struggle with communicating climate data. Some worry about being too alarmist, while others worry about communicating the data clearly. One American newspaper has a column devoted to breaking down climate data, which is the focus of this Episode of Stats+Stories with guest Harry Steven. Harry Stevens is the Climate Lab columnist at The Washington Post. He was part of a team at The Post that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the series “2C: Beyond the Limit.” Stevens came to The Post from Axios, where he designed news graphics and worked on data-driven investig ..read more

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 f ..read more

What fundamental values should data scientists and statisticians bring to their work? What principles should guide the work of data scientists and statisticians? What does right and wrong mean in the context of an analysis? That’s the topic of today's stats and stories episode with guests Stephanie Shipp and Donna LeLonde 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 ..read more

Welcome to Stats+Stories today we are trying something a bit different, with Major League Baseball’s opening day just hours away from the release of this episode we thought we would go back into the vault and throw some old school Stats+Stories baseball episodes at you. The first of which is as far back as you can go into the Stats+Stories archive, our first episode with former host Bob Long former panelist Richard Campbell, and guest Jim Albert who helped usher the show into what it has become today. So without further ado here is episode one, “Baseball and Statistics” with Jim Albert. The se ..read more

Communicating clearly about data can be difficult but it’s also crucial if you want audiences to understand your work. Whether it’s through writing or speaking telling a compelling story about data can make it less abstract. That’s the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Sara Stoudt. Sara Stoudt is an applied statistician at Bucknell University with research interests in ecology and the communication of statistics. Follow her on Twitter (@sastoudt) and check out her recent book with Deborah Nolan, Communicating with Data: The Art of Writing for Data Science ..read more

Hybrid cars are everywhere now but what is your best option if you want to feel the wind in your hair, or at least under your helmet and you want to get a little exercise as well? Well, e-bikes are an answer and that’s the topic on this episode of Stats + Short Stories with guest Helaine Alessio. Helaine Alessio, PhD, FACSM is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Kinesiology, Nutrition, and Health at Miami University and is a past President of the MWACSM and a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. She teaches Exercise Science-related courses and has received university comme ..read more

Long after Harry Nilsson said, “one is the loneliest number,” and after Bob Seger sang about feeling like a number, music streaming services are using data to help of discover new music that connects to our frequent plays and preferences. Dr. Kobi Abayomi helps break that all down in this episode of Stats+Stories. Dr. Kobi Abayomi is the Head of Science for Gumbel Demand Acceleration - a Software as a Service (SaaS) company for digital media. Dr. Abayomi was the first and founding Senior Vice President of Data Science at Warner Music Group (WMG). He has led data science groups at Barnes & ..read more

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 f ..read more

Good data visualization can catapult a news story or research article from ho hum to extraordinary. A new book series is exploring the careers of information graphic visionaries. And that's the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest RJ Andrews. Data storyteller RJ Andrews is a practicing data storyteller and creator of several books on information graphics. He helps organizations solve high-stakes problems by using visual metaphors and information graphics: charts, diagrams, and maps. He recently produced designs for The White House, Google, and MIT. RJ’s recently published Informat ..read more

According to the Pew Research Center, three in ten US adults say they've used a dating app, with Tinder, Match and Bumble being the apps most likely to have been tried. Pew's research has also found that one in 10 partnered adults in the US met their significant other on a dating app or site. Dating app success is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Dr. Liesel Sharabi. Dr. Liesel Sharabi studies the data science of love, including the ways that algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) help to facilitate intimate relationships. She has written about matchmaking algorithms ..read more