Stats + Stories

With the 2020 U-S presidential election all but upon us, media are rife with prognostications about which way voters are going to swing. Will reliably red states stay red or will voters produce a blue wave that crashes across the country? Will economic uncertainty trump concerns over COVID 19? Is political polarization really as set-in-stone as some have suggested? Understanding voter behavior is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics with guest Andrew Gelman. Andrew Gelman is a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University. He has received the Outstanding Statistical Application award three times from the American Statistical Association, the award for best article published in the American Political Science Review, and the Council of Presidents of Statistical Societies award for outstanding contributions by a person under the age of 40. His research interests include a wide range of topics, including: why it is rational to vote, why campaign polls are so variable when elections are so predictable and why redistricting is good for democracy among various others.

The federal government generates a lot of data, produced by agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. These data inform the decisions leaders make that shape our lives. Covering these agencies and their statistics is no easy task. A Bloomberg journalist was recognized this year for her excellence in reporting on these data, and that’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Molly Smith. Molly Smith is the team leader of U.S. legal news for Bloomberg. She’s just back from a three-month stint editing Japanese economic news. Before that, she covered the US economy for five years, including federal statistical agencies. It’s this coverage that the ASA recognized when it named her one of two winners of the 2026 Award for Excellence in Statistical Reporting. Smith was chosen “for championing credible, objective, accurate, and timely federal statistics and bringing attention to the threats to federal statistics.” Smith’s been working full-time at Bloomberg since 2016.

Jessica G. Myrick (@jessmyrick) is an associate professor of media studies at the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. Her research focuses on the role of emotions in shaping our responses to various types of media messagesMyrick's research has touched on topics ranging from skin cancer prevention campaigns and climate change appeals to the effects of incivility in responses to political Facebook posts and why we watch cat videos, and it has been featured in news outlets around the globe.

There's a lot of concern about how bots and algorithms shape our experiences, both online and off. Increasingly, those concerns are focused on our politics. Can bots fuel political polarization? Can algorithms shape political narratives? A recent study seeks to understand the agenda-building capabilities of social bots in a political context, and that is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, with Phillip Arceneaux and Josh Anderson. Phillip Arceneaux is an assistant professor of strategic communication in Miami University’s Department of Media, Journalism & Film, where he specializes in political communication, public diplomacy, and public relations. Arceneaux also leads the Diplomacy Lab at Miami University and has consulted on public relations and marketing for organizations such as the Department of State, Naval Academy, and Central Intelligence Agency. Josh Anderson is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Arizona, where his work focuses on studying science communication from an ecological perspective. Anderson’s research is situated within agenda-building and social identity scholarship. He’s a mixed-methods researcher who uses survey and experimental methods, interview-based qualitative methods, and computational methods to answer his research questions. Phil and Josh are two of the authors on a paper out with the Journal of Public Relations Research that focuses on the role social bots played in shaping campaign communication during the 2022 Ohio midterms.

During the 2010s, the United States netted just under one million new immigrants each year; between 2022 and 2024, that number was closer to three million. But since the election of Donald Trump, immigration to the U.S. has taken a nosedive, and potentially so has the economic growth of the country. The economic impact of the rise and fall of immigration to the U.S. is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, with Tara Watson. Tara Watson is the Director of the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at the Brookings Institution, where she’s also the John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair of Economic Studies. She is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Watson’s an economist whose work focuses on U.S. social policy, with interests in the safety net, health, and immigration. In 2015, she served as deputy assistant secretary for microeconomic analysis in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy. In 2021, she published the book ”The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear,” co-authored with journalist Kalee Thompson. Earlier this year, Watson published a report with Brookings on the economic impact of immigrants on the U.S. economy.

When reporters cover mass shootings news outlets often struggle to find ways to cover the event that won’t inspire others to do the same thing. Something similar follows in the wake of a suicide. Journalists don’t always cover suicides in their communities but when they do one of the concerns is whether that coverage might lead to a spike in suicides after the story is out. The media’s influence on the actions of individuals is a chronic concern for researchers in a number of fields and is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Joel Greenhouse Joel B. Greenhouse, Ph.D., is Professor of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected Member of the International Statistical Institute. Why did you study 13 Reasons Why? (1:23) What data did you use in this? (2:20) How did you choose the age ranges? (7:40) Editing the episode (9:45) What’re the limitations of this research (10:56) Correlation/causation issues? (13:21) Any outrageous stories about your work? (15:02) Most surprising result of your work? (16:15) Contagion with suicide (18:24) How would you follow this study up? (20:23)

When you think about science’s contribution to society, do you think first about new inventions with an immediate economic benefit? What about scientific advances that deliver enormous societal or environmental benefits—but whose economic value may not be immediate or easily measured? How can these latter advances be evaluated? What is the role of governments in recognizing and promoting these advances? On “Stats + Stories,” co-hosts John Bailer and Rosemary Pennington welcome Baroness Alexandra Freeman, a crossbench member of the United Kingdom House of Lords and principal of Hertford College, Oxford (Oxford University), to discuss how science policy might better reflect the full range of impacts science provides—and the important role science communication plays in making those impacts understood. @RoyalStatisticalSociety

Research suggests that more than half of Americans could benefit from taking a GLP-1 RA medication. The drugs were originally designed to help manage type two diabetes, but in 2024, the Food and Drug Administration approved one GLP-1, Semaglutide, for weight loss. With that approval came a spike in prescriptions for the drugs, and a spike in calls related to GLP-1s to poison control centers. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guests Jordan and Robert Miller. Jordan Miller is a post-baccalaureate student, double majoring in statistics and data science and mathematics at UT San Antonio. Robert Miller is a specialist in poison information with the South Texas Poison Center at UT San Antonio.

An entire industry has grown up around nutrition and health. People pushing everything from shakes, to meal kits, to special diets. While some of the claims surrounding such products can be questionable at best, the field of nutrition science is growing. Filled with researchers who are working to truly understand the science of food that is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Michelle Cardel. Dr. Cardel is an obesity and nutrition scientist, registered dietitian, the Director of Global Clinical Research & Nutrition at WW International, Inc. (formerly Weight Watchers) and a faculty member at the University of Florida (UF) College of Medicine, where she is also an Associate Director for the Center for Integrative Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases. Her research is focused on three areas, assessing the effects of psychosocial factors, including low social status and food insecurity, on eating behavior and obesity-related disease, the development and implementation of effective healthy lifestyle interventions with a focus on underserved populations, and improving gender equity within academia.

Women regularly hold leadership roles in stats departments at universities and in major statistical organizations, but it wasn't so long ago that women had to fight to be included. At one point, women faculty had to climb through the windows of the faculty club at Berkeley to attend meetings there; the stories of the struggles of women to be accepted in the profession aren't always visible. But one scholar is working to ensure those stories aren't forgotten. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Amanda Golbeck.  Amanda Golbeck is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where she's also a professor of biostatistics. Golbeck's known for her work on health numeracy, demography, and human intervention trials, but she's also known for her work on statistical narrative and for the biographies she's written. In 2025, Golbeck published Florence Nightingale David: A Passionate Probabilist, Statistician, Historian, and Leader, and in 2017, Equivalence: Elizabeth L. Scott at Berkeley. In 2016, Golbeck received the Elizabeth L. Scott Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies for her outstanding efforts in enhancing the status of women and minorities, fostering new leadership opportunities for women and men, promoting diversity at all levels, and advocating for a more inclusive, open, and supportive atmosphere in the statistical sciences.