Pedro Campos is the Deputy Director of the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) and associate professor in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Porto, and director of the methodology unit at Statistics Portugal. He also leads the team of statistical literacy at the global network of institutions for statistical training from the UN, where he helps promote statistical literacy worldwide.
Mark Glickman is a senior lecturer of statistics at the Harvard University Department of Statistics and a senior statistician at the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, a Veterans Administration center of innovation. He's also a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Before joining Harvard, he was a research professor of health policy and management at the Boston University School of Public Health. He's also served as an elected member of the American Statistical Association's board of directors, as representative of the Council of sections, governing board from night from 2019 to 2021.
Larry Lesser is a professor in the Mathematical Sciences Department of the University of Texas at El Paso. He's also an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association. Lesser has won a number of awards for his work within and outside of his discipline. He's also a singer-songwriter whose passion for combining music and STEM has made its way into his research, grant writing, teaching, outreach, and service, and most of his published poems and songs are STEM-related.
Episode Description
Statistical literacy was described by Ido Gall as "the ability to interpret, critically, evaluate and communicate about statistical information and messages". With that in mind, get ready to take a journey on all the ways our guests are promoting statistical literacy in this episode of Stats+Stories.
+Timestamps
Glickman/Lesser Interview Starts at 27:42
+Full Transcipt
John Bailer
Hello everybody. I'm John Bailer, and I'm here to introduce this special two part episode of stats and stories on statistical literacy. Our first guest is Deputy Director of the International Statistical literacy project, Pedro Campos. Enjoy
Statistical literacy was described by Ido gall as the ability to interpret, critically, evaluate and communicate about statistical information and messages. How can statistical literacy be developed? Promoting statistical literacy is the focus of this episode of stats and stories. I'm John Bailer, stats and stories is a production of the American Statistical Association as well as Miami University's departments of statistics and media, journalism and film. I'm joined in the studio by Rosemary Pennington from the Department of media, journalism and film. Our guest is Dr Pedro Campos, Deputy Director of the International Statistical literacy project, or islp an associate professor in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Porto and director of the methodology unit at statistics Portugal. He also leads the team of statistical literacy at the global network of institutions for statistical training from the UN where he helps promote statistical literacy worldwide. And he's also an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Pedro. Thank you so much for being here today. It's my pleasure, John, you know this the the islp describes its main objective as promoting statistical literacy across the world among young people and adults in all walks of life. Well, that sounds easy. Well, that's a big job. Can you give a brief overview of the International Statistical literacy project, please?
Pedro Campos
Yeah, sure. John, yes, indeed. The main goal of the islp is to promote statistical literacy, not only to the I would call them the main targets of this kind of literacy needs, like the students, you know, the young people, but also other targets, like the journalists, the citizen general citizens, the adults, and also the policy the policy makers, the decision makers, the, you know, even the politicians, the guys that works in companies and that are also they need to interpret the graphs and to write reports. All of them are the main targets of the islp, so that's, that's the main that's our main goal is to promote, although we are a little bit focused more, maybe on students, but all of these targets are the focus of the islp,
Rosemary Pennington
so how do you all conceptualize statistical literacy? What are the kinds of outcomes that you're you're hoping to
Pedro Campos
achieve? This is a very hard question to answer, because, you know, Rosemary. Maybe the first issue is, how can we measure statistical literacy? And this is maybe something very hard to do. There is not even a measure of statistical literacy around the world. There has been many attempts for that. One of them has been produced by OCD. The OECD produced an indicator for statistical literacy, imagine based on national newspapers or child archives. So the idea was to to measure the number of news that has been that have been released, containing numbers and quantitative facts. And based on that, they could measure how the statistical literacy could be more or less developed in different countries. So we don't know exactly how to measure it, although, well, that's there's the this indicator produced by OECD in the scope of an initiative. Maybe you have heard about it is. It is called Paris 21 it's also very connected with the United Nations, many national statistical offices around the world. So we don't know exactly how to measure it. We maybe can, you know, try some experiments. Do some questions. Try to ask questions about how to make the interpretation of a two way table, no like a timetable of a of a train or a bus. And using this kind of ideas, we can measure statistical literacy. But statistical literacy is a very complex concept. Okay, so you mentioned Ido gal in beginning John and Ido has made an excellent job in the past 20 years in trying to define different conceptual models of statistical literacy is very important. Concerned with adult literacy. So some years ago, maybe six years ago, we started a project. I was there also in that project called procivic stats. So procivic stat is, it was an Erasmus Plus, so it's an European in rent that funds this kind of projects we could do, you know, interchange of students and teachers. So I was there from my university and and then we defined three main issues. Let's, let's call it like that for a conceptual, conceptual model of statistical literacy more focused on this Civic statistics component, and I think that we can also use it for statistical literacy in general. In one hand, we have in this tree, you know, this triangle, the nodes of those of this triangle, we have the how to enable the processes. So you have the, you know, your quantitative core. You have, you know, your ability to communicate. So this is your enabling process. This is one of the of the spots of the triangle. Then you have the engagement in action, and it's how you can be critical, how you can reflect and evaluate. How are your dispositions to be engaged and act before these kind of things? And then the third pillar is the knowledge. Maybe this is the biggest one, the ones that we people that work in academia are more keen to develop, because this has to do with the knowledge of statistics, the models, machine learning statistics, you know, and also the extensions and official statistics. Because official statistics is this is not only about producing data officially, it's also about how to read and make the right interpretations of the data. So these three spots in the triangle enabling processes, engagement in action and knowledge, I think they are very important to define what statistical literacy should be.
John Bailer
So, so you talked about initially, when you're talking about statistical literacy, you talked about looking at archives of newspapers around the around the world and and looking at kind of their use of of numbers and statistics, and how what they reported. And so I've, I've kind of two related questions. One is, is, what about if they use them wrong, you know, so, so, I mean, as there's, there's the possibility that some of it, these things are not used correctly. But then, then, ultimately, what, what did you learn as you looked at, you know, if Could you, could you give a summary of kind of, what insights were gained by that evaluation?
Pedro Campos
Well, I participated in the beginning of the project, but then it was only for up to the OECD members to develop this index that they updated. By the way, some, some, some months ago, I, as far as I remember, there were three different levels of measuring statistical literacy just based on the quantitative news that you can find in the newspapers. The first level is what they call the non critical, consistent. So basically they they try to understand what kind of response you could do based on these news. But even if you are very if you even if you are not non critical, if you are a non critical reader of this, of this news, then the second level is that if you can be more critical in questioning, why is that number? Is that number correct? For example, if the inflation rate is 6.2 does it make sense? What is the meaning of 6.2 in an inflation rate? Does this means that the prices, in general, increase 6.2% compared to the previous month or to the same month in the year before. What is this? What is why is this really important? And then the third level is the critical and mathematical thinking. So now you must know about statistics. So for example, in terms of the inflation rate, this is what we call them, 12 month variation rates. So it's more complex, it's based on index numbers. So people that know about statistics and knows about econometrics, they know exactly how to compute an index number. So I'm just giving you an example about how can we make an interpretation, right interpretation, of an inflation rate. So based on these three levels, they could do, I don't know the details they could build an index of statistical literacy.
Rosemary Pennington
So this is an international effort, and I wonder if you could talk to challenges that your organization might face in trying to. You know, develop statistical literacy across cultures, right? So, you know, data may say one thing, but figuring out how to communicate it effectively, I'm assuming, would be different place to place. So how does the organization work to bridge those cultural divides when you're trying to sort of raise statistical literacy?
Pedro Campos
Yeah, this is a very good question, because we are dealing with more than 80 countries in the world, with 80 country coordinators. And when we have, we need, when we communicate with them, we know that they are facing different challenges in all the countries, in all the countries where they act so indeed, that the challenges are not the same. We developed a survey last year. It's going to be published in the Journal of International Association for official statistics. I think that it has been published already, where the majority of the country coordinators complained about the lack of interest for for example, by the decision makers on statistical literacy, so they don't know. They don't understand data and they're not. They don't even care about that. The other issue that they are facing is the lack of financial and human resources so they don't have money. Let me just say that the most part of these country coordinators, acting directly in the field, those different countries they come from, mainly to different sides, can have people from the academia. So they can be, you know, secondary or primary teachers or even teachers in the university. And also, on the other hand, we can have people working in national statistical offices. So these are the two branches of country coordinators that we have. So when you we asked me, When you asked me about the challenges in terms of communication, I think that if we rely on the national statistical offices to do this job, we are a little bit more comfortable, because usually, you know, there is a network of national statistical offices around the world. All countries in the world should have, and I think they do have one national Statistical Office, so meaning that they have this mission, because it's up to them to not only to collect, treat and disseminate data and results, but also to improve statistical literacy. And in statistical literacy, by the way, it's not just an altruistic thing that we that I'm involved in, just because it's my pleasure to do this note, or it's my pleasure to to to increase the literacy of the others. No, it's also because it's very important for statistical offices that the policy the decision makers, for example, the general public, understands and has some confidence on the national statistical offices so they can be more proactive in answering to our service. So that's, that's the that's the idea. That's why we are so interested in promoting statistical literacy from the side of the national statistical offices. So in other words, that's one of the jobs, one of the tasks, of the national statistical offices. So how can we communicate with them? So we come in, we communicate directly with the country coordinators. And usually, if they are those country coordinators, if they they are not from the the national statistical offices, they know, usually they know someone there that can help them, for example, to start doing some initiatives, using some materials to promote statistical literacy, some courses, some interventions and local interventions in some parts of the world, because the network of the national statistical offices goes until The most, I would say, rural parts of these countries.
John Bailer
Well, you're listening to stats and stories, and we're talking with Pedro Campos about statistical literacy. You know, you're it's interesting that the two main sort of groups that you talked about here was you talked about journalism and and statistics in in the news, and then you talked about official statistics. Although, you know, in the United States, we don't have an NSO we don't have the equivalent of that. We have 13 statistical agencies. So it's, it's a little more of a challenge to think about a single a single source, although the census has clearly been a partner in some of the kind of work that's that's done. You know that, what are some of the successes that you would point to from from the the is LP. What are things that you've really been excited about that the islp has done? Yeah, so
Unknown Speaker
as we, as we cannot measure
Pedro Campos
it's not possible to do it directly. One may be one of the proofs of the some success that we have. The SLP is the number of increasing submissions to the to the poster competition. Okay, so around the world, we have reached, I think that something like 30,000 or almost their submissions in all the parts of the world. So I mean, we have two levels of competition. One is the national level, and then we have the international level, where only the winning posters from the national level can compete. And we have three levels. Say, Okay, okay, we have two levels in in geographic terms, we have two levels, yeah, the basic level, the secondary level and university level. So, so at the end of the day, we can have three submissions for each country, one for each level. And if you have, let's say, 80 countries, you can have 80 multiplied by by three submissions at all. So that's and the increasing number of submissions, I think it proves that the message reaches the countries I was
Rosemary Pennington
going to ask, because there are two competitions that is LP does is the poster competition and the cooperative competition. Could you talk through sort of what the expectations for both of those are?
Pedro Campos
Yeah, of course, yeah. So the most popular is, of course, the poster competition. It involves, as I said, 1000s, 10s of 1000s of students around the world. And then we have the best cooperative project award. So the goal of the post of the best project cooperative award is basically to recognize the what do you call the outstanding, innovative, influential statistical literacy projects that have some kind of collaboration between two different institutions, like, for example, national statistical offices, schools, universities, media, libraries, you know, newspapers and so on and so forth. So that's, that's the other competition. So they both started in same year. I think it was in 2008 or seven. I think it was in 2000 2007 and the goal of this best cooperative project award is that, well, there are some goals. So you know, the project must be, for example, current and have the potential to remain current in the future, you know, updated all the excess of the of the materials should be free, without membership, and so on and so forth. So we must be focused on educational or having some concepts on statistical theory and data analysis, some some pedagogically and sound contents that are suitable for different target audiences. And so that's, that's the the goal of this second competition.
Unknown Speaker
So can you talk about the most recent winner of that?
Pedro Campos
Yeah, the most recent winner in the 2223 so this is award every, every two years. Was the that project that connects the New York Times with the American Citizens Association. What's going on on this graph? That's the that was the winner, the winner of that competition. And then before that, let me just recall in 2021 2020 and 2021. The winner was a project from Russia called trend, cool competition in statistics conducted by the Russian association of statisticians. So it's something that has some connections between the Russian association of statistics and the very huge network of more than 100 schools around around the country. And the year before, in 2019 was Brazilian project called Le Man. It's a, well, let me, means boat captain. It's, well, it's, you know, that that will that you used to drive a boat. So it's, it's, it's a Portuguese word that has been used for, you know, conducting or driving a boat, like, how, like, like you were trying to drive some project to conduct statistical literacy based on this nautical, nautical fan. So it's been run by professor of the University of Rio Grande Maureen por ciuncola. And it's a very huge project. So it's, that's the previous winner. So we have a winner every two years, every every second year. And these are these have been the last
Rosemary Pennington
winners. And I know another initiative that happened a year ago almost was the International Day of statistical literacy. So could you tell us about sort of that event, how it came together? And. What you see is the future of it? Yeah,
Pedro Campos
of course. So the International Day of statistical literacy is recent, very recent initiative by the islp. It has been oriented and conducted and and led by Saleh Habibullah from from Pakistan. She's very active on this purpose. So this year is going to happen on the 25th of November, and the goal is to make wool day of a webinar with different, you know, different times, so that you can attend if you are in the eastern part of the world, in the western part of the world or the eastern part. So it lasts for eight hours, and the center of it is going to be Pakistan. And then we all participate on that. And it is usually organized by so that person, salaya bibola, and also the country coordinators of the of the of the islp of Google.
John Bailer
So, how did you get involved in this? What? What was it that that that brought you in? I mean, you have, you, you have you've worked with, with a national Statistical Office. You work as a professor. So you have all. You have many, many interests. But what? What pulled you into this work of statistical literacy?
Pedro Campos
Yeah, that's, that's a good question. John, so I'm a professor also, as you said, so I started at the same time where I started in my national statistical office here in Portugal. And well, I love to teach. So my students, of course, they are adults already, but then I must tell you that it was not my fault. So I was a professor already, so I was always teaching, you know, maximum likelihood issues with lots of mathematical background and trying to prove that some estimator is centric or non centric. So use lots of mathematics in the Faculty of Economics, because the background for maths is very strong in my students, but also working at the same time in the national statistical office, I suddenly realized that the level of statistical literacy, not only outside the office, but also inside the office, was Not so huge. So people didn't know much about statistics. And also outside the office, the users of the results of official statistics, they did not understand very well what was there. So we we have been contacted in 1998 I think so, more than 25 years ago, by a secondary school, and they called us and they asked us, they asked us for a meeting where they could discuss why we cannot go a little bit, you know, more be more simple and more with more easy explanations about The results that we produce, because it was very difficult to to understand the results of statistics. So two teachers of the of the secondary, I think it was on the 10th grade or the 11th grade, came to our national Statistical Office. One was a professor of mathematics, and another one was a professor of economics. And then because of that, we started a project together with a kind of a support of the Ministry of Education. And the name of the title of the project was a layer, you know, like the ancient word that means random. So this, this project still exists. If you go to a, l, e, a layer, dot, P, T, you the problem is that it can only find things written in Portuguese, so you will see how it is there and then. Because of that, we started. I got involved on that. And some years later, Juana Sanchez, that was very enthusiastic. And she was the director of the former director of the islp, she invited me to join the group. So maybe that was my, the reason why I started being passionate of these kind of things.
John Bailer
You know, I find it really interesting that national statistical offices are so invested in this, you know, and I think that's part of the service to the larger community. When I think about some of the products that national statistical offices are producing, whether it's an estimate of economic health or it's an estimate of unemployment, or it's an estimate of changes in housing prices. So what's, what has been, sort of the one of the hardest statistical stories to tell from the National statistical office, from your perspective?
Pedro Campos
Well, yeah, one of them is, is inflation, the inflation rate? So it's not very easy to communicate how the inflation rate is. In computers. Maybe this should be I think that you know the users of our information, they know what we are measuring, but they don't know exactly how we measure. And it is the same thing, for example, for the unemployment rate, I'm just talking about the most, the two most important indicators that we disseminate in official statistics, I would say around the world, this is basically the inflation rate and the unemployment rate, because these are kind of macro indicators that tells you about the health of the economics of a country. So this is not very easy to communicate, or if you and what we have seen so far is that some journalists, for example, some years ago, they used to ask us questions about what they discussed with us the you know, Hawaii, why the inflation rate is this accelerating or going high more more quickly, but not now. What they do usually nowadays is just, they just they copy our communications. You know, we communicate every day with the media, and we send those daily informations that we publish in our website. And usually, what the journalists do nowadays. It just, they just copy and paste the messages. They don't really dig in the information and try to extract new information or get new questions about that. I don't know if you know what I mean. They just, I think that the literacy of journalists well, and I mean the economics literacy of journalists, or statistical literature of journalists, is not going high in, at least in the past years. So it's been difficult. It's going to be it's been a challenge to communicate with them, because we think that they they just don't a very strong background in,
Unknown Speaker
let's say, in statistics or in economics, yeah.
Rosemary Pennington
And I think that's fair. Most journalists are trained to be generalist, and so I think can feel intimidated by especially very sophisticated statistics.
Pedro Campos
Yeah, maybe that's the reason why this is happening.
John Bailer
Well, you know, there are people that do things like the islp, and there are other people that do podcasts that are hoping to tell stories and helping to raise
Pedro Campos
exactly congratulations for this excellent initiative. John,
John Bailer
Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for this episode of stats and stories. Pedro, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you very much. John and rosemary, thank you. Wow. What a great chat with Pedro. Our next guests are Mark Glickman and Larry lesser. Here, we learn about a much more musical way to talk about statistical literacy and maybe magic, maybe some other things too. So rosemary, take it away. You.
Rosemary Pennington
Have you ever been reading up on Bayesian analysis and thought, I wonder what a song about Bayes would sound like, or have you wondered what sorts of lyrics you might need to explain how to do statistics in a song Monty Python may have pioneered scientific songwriting and the Galaxy song, but today, a number of researchers are waxing poetic about their favorite models and analyzes. The intersection of stats and song is a focus of this episode of stats and stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington, stats and stories is a production of the American Statistical Association in partnership with Miami University's departments of statistics and media, journalism and film. Joining me, as always, is regular panelist John Bailer, emeritus professor of statistics at Miami University, we have two statistician song writers who are joining us on the show today. Larry lesser is a professor in the Mathematical Sciences Department of the University of Texas at El Paso. He's also an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association. Lesser has won a number of awards for his work within and outside of his discipline. He's also a singer songwriter whose passion for combining music and stem has made its way into his research grant writing, teaching, outreach and service, and most of his published poems and songs are STEM related. Mark Glickman is senior lecturer on statistics at the Harvard University Department of Statistics and senior statistician at the Center for healthcare organization and implementation research, a Veterans Administration Center of Innovation. He's also a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Prior to joining Harvard, he was a research professor of health policy and management at the Boston University School of Public Health. He's also served as an elected member of the American Statistical Association's board of directors as rep. Representative of the Council of sections, governing board from 2019 to 2021, and you're both again, statistical songwriting superstar so Larry and Mark, thank you so much for joining.
Mark Glickman
us today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I
Rosemary Pennington
just want to know how you started writing songs about stats. I have a hard time reading and understanding stats. Sometimes I can't even imagine thinking like, I'm going to write a song to the tune of Venus about a statistical idea.
Larry Lesser
Maybe it's not so strange after all, because, after all, a song with a chorus has repeated measures, right? No. But for me, I mean, I, I was a songwriter for about a decade before I even thought to start combining it with my teaching of math and statistics, but once I started doing it, the students gave me such an unexpectedly positive reaction that, of course, I just kept on going. How about you?
Mark Glickman
Mark, yeah, I had a slightly different route. So very early in my career, I would go to these international Bayesian conferences, and one of the things that they did at these conferences was have these pretty grand receptions at the end where they would basically have people perform all sorts of things, whether it would be write little plays or perform like acrobatic acts. I mean, it would just be all over the place. And a major component of these performances was performing song parodies, Bayesian song parodies. And so I kind of got in with the crowd that was doing the music, and just started writing song parodies. And so there were a bunch of us that were doing it, and from year to year at these conferences, we would just tote out our new song and perform them and play them. And so that's how I got started. And then eventually they made their way into my courses. I'm
John Bailer
a little curious about your process, you know. So I've I ended up submitting something to the a new sing contest for this year. And for me, I was thinking about the song came first. The popular song came first, that then morphed into to a potential lyric. I just what? How do you approach this? How did the two of you approach writing a parody or writing a new song that has a STEM content to it.
Larry Lesser
So for me, sometimes the title of a song just kind of is asking for it, you know, like Taylor Swift has a song called mean, well, that's the statistics word. So, like we wrote it to be about the statistical mean, the Kenny Rogers song the gambler. I mean, to me, that was crying out to be a lottery outreach song. So usually they just sort of grab me. Yeah, for
Mark Glickman
me, it's a little bit of a mix, so more, more recently than, than, than other times, I guess, like if there's a particular song that is like kind of swimming in my head, one good way to sort of cure that cure that ear worm is to actually write a statistics song parody. So that's one way that I've been doing it. But the other way that I've been doing it is the way that Larry is describing. So in fact, one of the songs that I wrote early on, and in fact played for my intro stat class this past semester is taking the Rolling Stone song satisfaction, and I wrote the song parody satisfaction,
Unknown Speaker
oldie, but goodie.
Mark Glickman
So yeah, so it can work both ways. But I can't believe that you're asking us to divulge ourselves. Oh no. You know, we as artists are very reluctant to tell people how we come up with, you know, the magic that
John Bailer
appears no comment is an acceptable response on the podcast. I was
Mark Glickman
going to say that, but, you know, Larry let off telling telling all say I felt like I would be withholder.
Larry Lesser
The more the merrier. There's room. The cause web collection has 200 songs, you know? I mean, it's wonderful to have so many people doing
Mark Glickman
this. Yeah, I would like to actually just really quickly mention that I was trying to look for some of my songs on cause web and I discovered that, like, 90% of the songs are Larry's, Larry's, in case that hasn't been clear to people who are listening to this, this podcast, Larry is very, very prolific. And if you're going to contribute to cause web which you should just be aware that your song, or your songs are going to be buried there, and it's going to be hard to find. Unless you wade through a lot of they'll
Larry Lesser
stand out, because my songs are just lesser songs. Arms
Rosemary Pennington
Larry, since, since John mentioned the amusing contest, I do want to mention that you placed third in this year's amusing contest for a couple of songs. Do you want to talk to us about what those songs are, are about, and how they came about? Sure.
Larry Lesser
So. So one of them is called college days, because, as everyone knows, the college gays guidelines are in the process of being revised one more time. They should probably be finalized sometime within the year and and so I thought, well, what famous anthem kind of rhymes with gays? And I came on up with purple haze, Jimi Hendrix anthem, which gave me an excuse to pull up my electric guitar, which I usually don't play that much. But I had a lot of fun rewriting the song, and I worked in all 10 of the gays guidelines into the lyric. So that was kind of fun. The other song is, is called backyard, and it basically takes John took his famous quote that, you know, the best thing about being a statistician is you get to play in everyone else's backyard. And I've always loved that idea, and I decided to take it literally. And the verses kind of go through things that you can do to collect data in a backyard setting literally. And it was just a lot of fun, and hopefully will be sort of a celebratory song for the whole field.
John Bailer
Yeah, that's that's awesome. Larry, that's Well done. Well done can just for the folks listening that don't know about this. You know, cause is the Consortium for the advancement of undergraduate Statistics Education and gays is guidelines for assessment and instruction in Statistics Education, so, you know, just as a little bit of background. So I think, I think that's great. I I love the idea of, you know, taking these, these rules, these guidelines, these insights, and then trying to put them into a package that appeals. How do you know if your songs work in terms of and what is, what does work mean for you?
Larry Lesser
So, you know, there's sort of the level of satisfaction I get in my own living room, which sometimes is misleading. Sometimes I don't really know if it's works until I protest it. Play it for an actual classroom or some key friends that are sounding boards for me and and and then that gives me a much better idea. Sometimes the lines I think are a throwaway line get the biggest reaction or laugh or something, and other times, a line that I thought is just brilliant just seems to go over the head, and, you know, so it's humbling, you know, and, and, but that then encourages me to rewrite it and make it better. And, you know,
Mark Glickman
so it's all good. Yeah, I know I've been successful if I've been approached with a record deal, but so I just basically have to judge based on myself. I mean, you know, like the one or two times for any given song that I'm that I'm writing, if you know when it gets performed, you know, you see the reaction. I think you know, most of the songs that we would end up performing, you know, for these conferences say, you know, people are dancing, so that's the reaction they get. I guess, if people are dancing, then it's, it's, it's a success, and in a classroom context, you know, I think, like Larry is saying that, you know, there are certain like, words or phrases that some students may or may not react to, and so that can be rewarding if you've intended for a particular line to be funny, and then others, you know, sometimes you might miss the mark. But yeah, I mean, there's just reward in being able to write a song and kind of like amuse yourself, and if nobody else finds it funny, then, you know, not a big deal. But yeah, it's, it's more, I think, for the self reward of it, as opposed to,
Larry Lesser
I would add that, I mean Mark and I mainly just responded as sort of wearing the hat of, like, writer and performer. But if, if I put on my educator hat, there is a way, and Dennis Pearl and I have been doing this very intentionally for for many years now. You know, there's a way to tie a song to learning objectives. You know? I mean, it's wonderful to write songs that just bring people together, build community at a conference. I mean, that's that has its place too. But if you're really trying to make it a classroom song, then you want to tie it to a concrete learning objective and think very carefully about what to do or say before the song, to set it up, and then what to do or say afterwards to make sure that the point landed. So that's that's a different use of song than than just for the entertainment and the community building aspect.
Rosemary Pennington
Then I want to ask you, Larry, can you talk us through something that you think is a really exact, good example of how that worked in the classroom, and maybe an example that went sideways?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, I may need to pause it to think about that one
Mark Glickman
while you're thinking about it. I could just mention that maybe more in contrast to Larry in a in a pedagogical, pedagogical, pedagogical setting, for me, I'll usually bring out these songs on the last day of a class, rather than incorporate them into the middle of the class. So for me, it it does the songs that I sing for my classes do? Try. Pull in elements of the different bits and pieces that are in the course, but just as a rapper. And so I do that intentionally, but not maybe quite as intentionally, I think, as Larry is describing in, you know, aiding the understanding of material as it's being taught.
Larry Lesser
I would add that, you know, the rapper thing is a very important use of song to really kind of seal the deal with things. And one can be just as intentional to use it as a motivational thing to, you know. So, like one example, one of my songs is based on sung from the point of view of a character who suffers from equi probability bias, in other words, the idea that all events, all possible events, are always equally likely, which you know, is obviously not always true, but in a world where always dice and spinners and cards that may be all that they know from a textbook, right? Anyway, so a song like that helps getting them thinking about reflecting on the ways in which our intuition needs to be given more nuance and fleshed out and educated and so that could be an example. Other times, a song is just meant to help them just remember something we were talking before the taping started. It started about a 10 second jingle I have just to make sure students remember the all important definition of what a p value is. And it goes, it is key to know what p value means. It's the chance with the no you obtain data that's at least that extreme. And you know, you can almost see students during exam kind of singing,
Rosemary Pennington
you're listening to stats and stories, and we're talking with Larry lesser and Mark Glickman about statistical songwriting.
John Bailer
I would say another part of the success of a lot of the things that you both have done is this brings a smile. I mean, for me, is just even reading the lyrics I, you know, just, you know, mark your Well, I'm the thesis. I'm the prior that you desire sung to Venus. I just find that warms my heart, and I, I love the things that that the hooks that you've built into there that have kind of this, this familiar component to music that you may know, but then also engages in ways that they kind of open you up to thinking about this more. And I would say that both of you are probably being very successful in engaging the hearts of your students by doing this. How What's some of the reactions that you've had from your students as you've as you've done these, these bits?
Larry Lesser
I think if we go, if we did a content analysis of a narrative comment students put on my end of course evaluations, you would probably never know that I only use songs for at most 1% of class time, because that things like that are the things they they remember the most, and and because I Think it humanizes the course, it humanizes the instructor. It makes them realize, hey, he's going beyond his comfort zone. I guess I can stretch myself to learn this statistic stuff.
Mark Glickman
I find that students again, they they're they're mostly surprised, because they don't see it coming
Unknown Speaker
that I bring it so, in fact,
Mark Glickman
I even discussed with my co so my co instructors this year for I taught a large undergraduate introductory statistics course this past semester with basically a co instructor. And at Harvard, we have what are called preceptors. So I kind of told them early in class, oh, I'll probably haul out one of my my songs and played for the students. And then I kind of, like was hemming and hawing, and, you know, made it sound like, well, you know, it's kind of a, kind of a hassle to bring my guitar in and, you know, probably not going to do it. And then that very last, last day of class, I kind of caught not only the students, by surprise, boy co instructor, so I, you know, I basically, you know, brought the guitar out and started playing, played satisfaction. And, yeah, I mean, what happened is, after a while, you know, about halfway through the song, all the students were sort of clapping along in beats. So
John Bailer
great. So you two are, your interests go extend beyond the being songwriters and performers. There are other ways that you think about bringing kind of fun and into statistics instruction. I know that, you know there, there's been some involvement with writing captions for cartoons that might be part of it, or others are even, you know, doing magic, and association of magic with this, you know, can you talk a little bit about how those are integrated and and perhaps that's connected to a story about, maybe how you two met the first time?
Mark Glickman
Yeah, I'm happy to tell this story. I might have, like, a clouded version of it. So, Larry, I don't get it quite right. Right? So at some point in in the early 2000s I had this idea that it might be nice to write a paper that was very specifically on incorporating magic tricks into the statistics classroom. And I had co written another paper that was like more on just generally demos. And that's kind of what got my brain going in that direction. And what happened, I think, just very serendipitously, I ran across this ad for this magician who happened to be a statistician, and his name was Lawrence lesner. And so I figured, oh, what the, you know, what the hell I'll contact him and see if he's interested in being a co author on this paper. So I was obviously very sloppy about it, and instead, I send a note to Larry and and so, Larry and so, you know, I think I prefaced my note to him, saying, oh, you know, I saw your ads for these magic performances, and, you know, thought it might be worth our, you know, connecting and possibly writing a paper on incorporating magic tricks into statistics classes and so. So Larry, very politely said, I don't think I'm the person that you think I am, but it just so happens that I am into magic, and I would be interested in doing this if you wanted to push through. And I'm like, sounds great to me. And so that is for people listening who don't know how to form collaborations. I'll consider myself the poster child for just forming strange collaborations this way. So, yeah, so it worked fine. We ended up getting this peer reviewed paper published. And so, yeah, we have a paper between us on incorporating magic tricks in the statistics class.
Rosemary Pennington
I do have a question for you. It's sort of, it's more about like, I guess your vulnerability. So I did acting and singing when I was a kid and growing up, and I jumped away from that because I have pretty terrific stage fright when it comes to things like that. And I, you know, in the classroom, there's always this juggle as a professor, with, you know, being human and being vulnerable with your students, but also trying to figure out, like how, what to shield right from them. And I wonder what it was like that first couple of times when you went in there and were singing and sort of how you and maybe, maybe it was fine for you, and you did not feel that stage right, but it does feel like a very kind of vulnerable thing to open up to your students in this way. So just kind of want to talk about what that was like for you guys when you first started. When you first started.
Larry Lesser
You know, I think there are, there's a whole continuum of how vulnerable to be and and even with songwriting itself. I mean, some songs are just sort of a clever, witty, intellectual exercise, and there's like almost no vulnerability at all, right? And then there are songs or poems I've written which actually talk about, like a vulnerable moment in a medical situation or something like that, that, you know, where I really am sort of showing more of myself and and I think, for example, I think there's something about the using the particular in a way that's ultimately universal, you know, like Billy Joel song Piano Man, very few people will ever be trying to make a living as a piano player in a bar. But the universal is, everyone can relate to the idea of doing something, but being able to imagine a life that's way beyond what you're doing and not sure if you'll ever get there, you know, that's universal, right? And so again, like I said, I've written poems about, you know, vulnerable moments as a new father or as someone who just got a medical test result that was very scary, but turned out eventually to be false, but I didn't know that yet, you know. And so I've written poems about things like that, and when I share them, you know, there are people in the room that really it's a deeper level of connection. And so I guess, as a writer, you know, when you have processed something enough where, even though it's about something personal. You know that you're really sending it out there with an energy that's actually more universal, and you know when you've reached that, because not everything I put in my diary is suitable for other people to
Rosemary Pennington
hear, right? But for me just to stand in front of people with a guitar and sing anything, even if it was Row, row, your boat would feel like a leap for me. So I think it's just wonderful. I think that you guys are comfortable doing this and performing for your students in this way. Because, again, it's something that I personally find terrifying.
Larry Lesser
And I mean, for me, it's just like, it's not about even though, I believe me, I have, you know. All writers have their own shared ego about what they create, but when I'm in a classroom, it's not about me. It's like I try to get out of the way as much as possible. It's about connecting with the students, and if being able to do something that's a little silly or a little vulnerable to connect with them will serve their education, I'm happy to do that. That's my job, you know,
Mark Glickman
yeah, I, I guess I can speak more more to the question of just, you know, feeling comfortable standing in front of people and performing. I mean, I've had, you know, my I've had quite a long background of performing in front of people. I started out as a classically trained pianist, and so I, you know, I've done recitals for many years, and so I think, you know, just from that repetition, you kind of build up, or at least, I felt like I built up, you know, a comfort level when I'm performing in front of people. And then you add to that, you know, performing magic, and then add to that, standing in front of a classroom, and, you know, in a sense, performing the act of pedagogy. You know, all those things I think, tend to accumulate and build up confidence when when you're in front of a group of people. So, I mean, at some point, you know, playing, playing an instrument in and singing in front of a group of people is, you know, not something that just seems too out of the ordinary. I also like to think that, you know, the way that I, I think that I can appear to people is, you know, as somebody who, you know, is generally comfortable around other people. And so it's not, you know, it's not really out of my comfort zone doing something like that. So, but, but I recognize that some people are, you know, it's not the most fun thing to stand in front of a group of people and, you know, kind of expose yourself, in a sense.
Larry Lesser
So one thing to add to that is the, you know, the cause web fun collection has like 13 different different types of fun, and they are certainly not all equal in vulnerability, right? It is definitely more vulnerable to seeing in front of people than it is to tell a joke or to project a slide that has a cartoon on it, and Dennis and I were very cognizant of that, because we didn't want someone saying, Okay, people like Mark and Larry Are you know, are have this talent, but what about everyone else? What are they supposed to do? We wanted to take talent out of the the equation, and so almost all of the 200 songs in the collection have sound files of MP threes. So all an instructor has to do is hit play. They don't have to have talent themselves, or, you know, or take a big, vulnerable risk themselves. They can just hit play and use the collection that we already have.
Mark Glickman
And to the extent that people are afraid of making mistakes, and, you know, somehow being critiqued for it. You know, the nice thing about these recorded versions is that you can just smooth over those mistakes. You can do another take. So anytime that you're going to upload a finished product to cause web, you know, it could be in as good a condition or as bad condition as you want, and that, you know that that's something that, I think, again, obviates this problem of being up in front of people,
John Bailer
you know. So now you have this, this catalog. I mean, like, like, all artists, all great artists, you have this catalog of work and and a lot of times the people just meeting the artist are looking for the greatest hits. So, so if, if someone is coming to encounter these new these new, great performers on scene. What is the first song of your collection that you would recognize that you would recommend to a new listener?
Larry Lesser
I guess if I have a signature statistic song, it would probably be the gambler, my lottery outreach song,
Mark Glickman
Yeah, mine, for sure, would be my parody of of Norwegian Wood by the Beatles to bass song. It's a whole story that that's my kind of go to song these days. And for the last 20 years,
Larry Lesser
I actually had talked about being vulnerable for the banquet at US cots in 2013 I was given the opportunity to perform like a set of, like, 25 minutes worth of my greatest lesser hits and and make it flow like a concert. And, you know, it's recorded, it's posted. You could be the judge if I pulled it off. But it was a lot of fun to to do that and play that role for that evening.
Rosemary Pennington
Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of stats and stories. Larry and Mark, thank you so much for being here. This was so fun. This was thanks. Thank you. Stats and stories is a partnership between the American Statistical Association and Miami University's departments of statistics and media, journalism and film. You can follow. Us on Spotify, Apple podcasts or other places where you find podcasts. If you'd like to share your thoughts on the program, Send your email to stats stories@amstat.org or check us out at stats and stories.net and be sure to listen for future editions of stats and stories where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.
John Bailer
Thank you all once again for listening to this special two part episode of stats and stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. You.