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. Wendy is also proud and grateful to have been elected as the 2020 ASA President.
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Rosemary Pennington: The American Statistical Association or ASA was founded in 1839 in Boston and is the second oldest continuously running professional organization in the US. Today more than 19,000 people are members of the ASA as it marks its 180th anniversary. It’s also preparing for the new tenure of an new President, and that’s the focus of today’s episode of Stats and Stories recorded in front of a live audience for the very first time. I’m Rosemary Pennington and we’re in the Shriver Center at Miami University to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Miami University’s Department of Statistics. The podcast is a production of the Stats Department and the Department of Media, Journalism and Film as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me in Shriver are panelists John Bailer, the founding and current Chair of Miami statistics Department, and Richard Campbell, former and founding Chair of Media, Journalism and Film. Our guest today is Wendy Martinez, the incoming president of ASA. Martinez is the Director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a return guest to Stats and Stories. She’s here today to talk about her agenda as ASA President. Thank you so much for being here.
Wendy Martinez: Thank you very much for having me.
Pennington: Now I know presidents, when they come in, sort of focus on three initiatives. Could you talk a bit about what your three initiatives are going to be as you go into the leadership of the ASA?
Martinez: Yes, I’d be happy to, but I’d like to change it up a little bit. I’d like to start off with a question.
[Laughter]
John Bailer: Oh man. I hate when this happens.
Pennington: John, you did not prepare me for this situation.
Martinez: Well, I’m actually going to ask John, so it’s true right that you’re the current president of ISI?
Bailer: The International Statistical Institute. That’s correct.
Martinez: Okay, so does that society have initiatives like the ASA has?
Bailer: Uh, no.
Martinez: Okay, that wasn’t really a monologue.
Bailer: Okay and the other thing is on a podcast is if you just answer with one word, that’s the worst possible response. So within the ISI we have strategic priorities and we’re talking about some things that we might be working towards, and we’re- one of the things that we’re considering we’re looking to push forward next year is going to be the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale and one aspect of that that at ISI is going o be rolling out and I hope with partnership like ASA and Royal Stats society and others is the International year for women in statistics and data science. And we’re going to hopefully bring – roll this out at Florence’s birthday, you know, mark your calendars, and then have it culminate at the world statistics congress at the Hague. So, thanks for that plug.
Martinez: Thank you I’m very excited about that. Especially visiting the Hague. That’s going to be beautiful, but I also have another question, I’m sorry John. [Laughter]
Bailer: She just hijacked our show, you know we bring her here…
Pennington: We’ve never had this happen before.
Martinez: I’m sorry. Well this is something that I’ve been thinking about and it does pertain to ASA initiatives. Traditionally they are called the ASA President’s initiatives, but, I mean you’ve been involved with the ASA for many years and I’ve been thinking that it really shouldn’t be called ASA President initiatives it should just be initiatives for our association itself. Because I feel like if it’s my initiatives then they’re here then they’re gone and id like to see these things stay. They mean a lot to me. But I just was wondering what you thought about that.
Bailer: I think that’s brilliant. I mean I think that the idea is that you want sustainability in anything that you invest in. you know. We’re here celebrating the 10th anniversary of my department coming into existence, that’s part of why we’re doing this live recording. My dream is for this- for there to be a 25th anniversary that I’ll come back to. That’s the kind of hopes that we have for the future and I think that with the initiatives that you are talking about within the ASA that you’re setting a precedent that’s going to continue on. Or maybe not setting a precedent but [] efforts that are already important within your society. So, I think that’s a great idea.
Martinez: Thank you because I sort of feel that if it’s just the president’s initiatives or my initiatives I know they’re not going to continue or there won’t be this strong [] for them that their initiatives for our profession as well as our association. So, this is where I do the monologue?
Bailer: You want her to ask you the question again?
Pennington: What would you like ASA ‘s initiatives to be while you’re in office?
Bailer: Ooh I like that.
Martinez: I like that too. Thank you. Well, I do have three of them. As rosemary first mentioned, so the first one I’m going to talk about I probably the one that’s the most vague or high level I guess you would say. So at this point K-12, the ASA has had a long history at supporting efforts for graduate school education, undergraduate school , and even high school but I think it’s really important that we feed the pipeline so I think what I want to concentrate on are the younger ages. So, I’m really hoping we will focus on K-6. I was talking to somebody earlier today about getting kids excited about data and statistics and mathematics at a really young age and then hopefully by the time they’re in college they’re no longer scared of it.
Richard Campbell: Yeah I would argue that this is a good place to focus in years of advising Media, Journalism and Film students, and particularly Journalism students, I always have encouraged them to take a statistics course. We should be requiring it, we don’t yet. But most of our students do take a statistics course, but many of them are – don’t want to do that. And partly one of the things that’s discouraging to me is how many of them have and a statistics course in high school. As a former high school English teacher , you know, I would say maybe 10% of them have had a statistics course and when that happens they’re glad to go in to it and take a statistics course in college because it’s not something that they’re scared of so I think the initiative should be on the younger student and getting students prepared to take a statistics course and go in that direction in college.
Bailer: So, who do you think- who’s leading this for you?
Martinez: Oh, that’s a good question. I’d say that’s the one that’s less well defined of all of them, so we don’t really have one person yet to lead it. Are you volunteering?
[Laughter]
Bailer: Mo but I can tell you one of the things we’ve done at Miami University – one of my colleagues she’s been very much involved in our careers involving quantitative skills effort, which is basically an attempt to reach out to high school women that would involve any kind of career that would involve quantitative skills, not just stat. So I think that there’s some great energy, and we’ve heard of the Florence Nightingale days that have occurred and there are some initiatives that have been and I’m interested to see how this might build and interact with that.
Martinez: Yeah I do have one sort of whacky idea, which is to create a game or an app that would introduce the ideas of statistics and handling data and then get kids excited and used to it in a less threatening way, or in a more exciting and fun way. And we do have some volunteers for that, and we’re looking for more. I’m not creative enough to develop them.
Bailer: There are some that I think are being done in Europe.
Martinez: Really?
Bailer: Yeah, there are some of the official statistics in Europe are doing some of these types of activities and so you might be able to find some.
Martinez: Oh, really fantastic.
Campbell: I tell my students that their children, and this is very sad for me- will not grow up reading newspapers.
Martinez: That’s true,
Campbell: And they will grow up on tablets and smart phones, so anything you can do to introduce numbers to the kids at an early age… I already see my own five-year-old grandson manipulating his smart phone, and he loves playing any kind of game on it. So that’s your target audience.
Martinez: Oh yes. And I think kids at that age- I mean I personally believe that they are able to appreciate- maybe not at the level we are appreciating it, but you know, have fun with data. I used to teach at a business school, you know undergraduate, and they had to take one intro class and that was the last class most of them would take, kind of what you were saying Richard, and I would argue that that’s probably the first class that they should take and it was always pretty sad when they didn’t because they would have gained those skills that they needed to be successful.
Pennington: It seems like part of the K-6 push kind of centers around the idea of making statistical knowledge accessible, so I want to ask about- I know that one of your other initiatives is to have a TED talk of some kind take place. Could you explain a little bit about that?
Martinez: Yeah so I kind of got interested in listening to TED talks and I came to realize that they can be very influential in sort of strange ways. Just influential on an individual level. So I think that there’s a lack of appreciation maybe or a lack of understanding about statistics and data science and how that impacts our world, and so I think that having something like a TED talk or a TEDx event will help us to, or you know help the world understand what statisticians are doing.
Campbell: Well I would encourage all statisticians people, people doing numbers to do a TED talk, first od all to kind of sort of communicate what you’re doing to a more general audience , but I also found – Charles does a lot of our research, and whenever he can find a statistician or a data scientist has done, that’s all I need to prepare for this podcast, that is all I need to prepare for the podcast… so-
Bailer: Do you prepare?
[Laughter]
Campbell: Especially if there’s a TED talk, then I get all mu questions and I also find that I learn something about the person that we’re going to be interviewing who I often have never met, and we do most of these, I think, not in person, so I’m for this.
Martinez: Well, I did see a TED talk once where the person analyzed TED talks to see which ones – you know what were the characteristics that made a successful TED talk, so that’s a good. And Eric Laber at NC State, so the plan is to have it in October in 2020 and sort of around Florence Nightingale day, it won’t be exactly that but around that same time, so.
Pennington: You’re listening to Stats and Stories, and today we are live at Shriver at Miami University talking with ASA’s President elect Wendy Martinez. can we ask about your third prompt? We’ve talked about the K-6 efforts that you would like to see happen and the TEDx possibility of an event. So again, this idea of making statistical analytics being more available could you talk about the third initiative is for you
Martinez: Yes that one’s very ear and dear to my heart so the past presidents ever since Barry Nussbaum, well probably earlier, but anyway, he kind of focused on diversity and he was interested in having more participation by the Asian community, I guess I’ll say, and then Lisa LaVange in her leadership initiative- she was kind of focusing on diversity also, and current president Karen Kafadar , she’s focusing on Hispanics and Native Americans , but I guess it started when I was preparing my candidate statement for running for president and somebody and I think it was Swarthmore, she was saying we really need to be more inclusive with the diversity of students that we have today and especially LGBTQ and I thought oh that’s true, so a year ago in 2018 I was at the women in statistics data conference another ASA conference and Suzanne Thornton had a panel session on LGBTQ statisticians and how it is to be one ad what are some of the issues that have to be dealt with so I was asked to moderate the or be chair of the panel I guess. So that was an eye opener for me. I really learned a lot there. So, I’m sorry for this monologue,
[Laughter]
Bailer: No this is great.
Martinez: So that sort of just started things going .and we kept the conversation going after that panel and we had an article in Significance Magazine in June of 2019 and so this is one of my initiatives or one of the ASA’s initiatives which is to be inclusive, and I really want to call it inclusion rather than diversity because I think it’s important that we make everybody feel welcome and that we’re there in a way that they need us to be.
Campbell: You talked on your notes to us about some of the things that you were going to talk about – about making statistics courses the approach to them more approachable and less intimidating, which I think a lot of those students have that fear before they even walk in to the classroom and maybe this is something the audience has ideas about later on, but can you give a couple examples about how you would do that?
Martinez: Well I have to steal one from Jack Miller, another Miami University graduate – they are on the – one of the – so this initiative is going very well already. we do have a working group that’s tackling some of these issues, and Jack is now the chair of the ASA committee that’s dealing with some of these issues, but he wrote along with – I forget the co-author, but an article that was in the Armstead News about how the idea of gender is dealt with in the classroom and that usually its considered to be a binary variable but that’s not necessarily true so that’s been another eye opener for me too, that I had never realized that, because when I would teach baby stats or something id say this is a binary variable and it could be male or female and that’s not really the case, so that’s one way .
Pennington: I think we’re going to open this up to the audience now, our producer Charles Blades is going to be moving about the audience with a microphone if you have questions for Wendy.
Male Speaker: Hello, so as a practicing data scientist and someone who’s interested in inclusion and developing in that direction, what sort of thoughts do you have for people that are in the workforce just sort of cranking along? Things that they can do to push that mission forward.
Martinez: Well I’ve actually been thinking about this and I welcome any ideas that you may have but so I work for the bureau of labor statistics which is a federal agency and one of the things we can do there is what they call, at least in my agency, affinity groups, and so I think maybe that’s one way to – if you create these groups it may be a way for people to come together, but also learn, because that’s one thing I’ve learned by working with the LGBTQ inclusion is that some of the issues that have to be dealt with don’t always have to be done by people in that community, right? So theres allies, right and allies not just with LGBTQ but with African American or whatever group it is, you know you don’t have to be in that group you can be an ally of that group so I think finding ways to facilitate that would be helpful.
Jack Miller: Hi I’m Jack Miller. My coauthor was Jack Harden, but to address the question about diversity and inclusion so one of the things so I feel very fortunate in terms of working on the LGBTQ+ initiative that Wendy has. But something that we’re doing is our committee is currently the committee known as – and this is going to be on a recording – the LGBT Concerns Committee but we’re trying to change that to hopefully LGBT + advocacy, so we’re looking into advocacy in addition to allies, something that was talked about at the women in statistics and data conference is how can you be an advocate for other groups? So, I met maybe another member of the LGBTQ+ community but I am also a white individual so how can I be an advocate of or people of color? Not identifying as a woman how can I be an advocate for women? And so I would invite folks that are interested we are going to have an ASA community, so join the ASA if you’re not already a member, and the ASA community is a friend of the LGBTQ committee and then also I was just talking to Dionne Swift, who is the current chair on minorities and statistics , we are working with some other folks, committee on women and statistics to set up with some folks at ASA to try and get a diversity initiative and inclusion interest group so that would also be getting towards those infinity group ideas.
Martinez: Yeah thank you and I don’t think we mention ed ally training, so how can you learn how to be a better ally? For whatever group it is.
Male Speaker 2: On your K-6 initiative with stat in the elementary grades have you thought about working with the national council teachers of mathematics? That might be a nice way to get some traction on the project.
Martinez: Thank you I think we’ve talked about several of the association’s Donna LaMond at the ASA has some really good connections with some of the other teacher associations too yeah.
Sam: I’m Sam, I’m a freshman here at Miami and I really enjoy listening to your K-6 efforts and beyond initiative with stats. From the high school I came from I was really lucky to actually be able to take statistics , a lot of the high schools in my area didn’t have it, and really, unfortunately, the only people that took that were the people that said I don’t want to do calc later on. So with that in mind how do you think the school environment, my age demographic, would change if more people were statistically literate?
Martinez: Well that’s a really good question I guess I would hp[e that maybe the different courses would add more types of examples or training into their courses so say for physics or chemistry or what have you that maybe there would be more of an emphasis on that so that people could understand or maybe appreciate how statistics and analyzing data are just – can be used in so many different applications and disciplines so that it’s not something to be scared of. I’m glad you were able to take statistics. Earlier this morning there was a young woman who graduated from Miami, I forgot her name but she had taken statistics at her high school and she came here knowing that that’s what she wanted to major in and I thought wow, that’s really amazing because – in fact we were talking , like I said in my day – whatever that was, that there really wasn’t this kind of traditional statistics degree or something but now there- for example a lot of the folks that I was there a lot of statisticians that got degrees in astronomy or engineering or physics or something but not in statistics so I think it’s fantastic that there’s classes like that at a younger age so-
Bailer: So one question about the K-6, sort of a follow up, when I think about you reaching some of the apps or some of the other tools you might build but it also seems like its critically important to build this preservice connection to schools of education and teacher training and possibly some Inservice activities. And I know we’ve been challenged at time to sort of build some ins service activities and to get the kind of interest, the kind of traction that we might like. So, are you kind of thinking at all about how do you get some of the teachers- you know, early on in their preparation the k-6 teachers involved>?
Martinez: I think so. One of the things I feel a little bit sensitive about is that I’m not a teacher- well, I’m not a high school teacher and I don’t teach at the university anymore, so sometimes if I’m kind of on the outside looking in and saying oh you should be doing all these things and really what I’m doing is imposing an extra burden on the teacher so, I want to be sensitive to what they really need and what would benefit them . but you mention something about service and I’m not sure if this is exactly what you meant but the theme for the [] statistical meetings we always have a theme of the conference and the JSM in 2020 it’s everybody counts data for the public good. Do I have that right? Okay. Which was in part inspired by the LGBTQ community, you know that everybody’s important. You know that idea of inclusion, but, anyway, so Donna at ASA met with the – well I think there were several associations, but in particular she was talking with the AAAS, and to maybe making some coordinated efforts to have – to the teachers necessarily but have young people have experience with analyzing data, performing some surveys, and doing and using data for good, so hopefully that’s going to be another aspect.
Campbell: John and I got together on this podcast because originally we were on a committee to start a quantitative literacy requirement here at Miami which we instituted , and I know that there are some states, I think Minnesota might be one, that have a media requirement in their curriculums, I don’t know how many statewide initiatives there are to require a quantitative literacy requirement but I think this is another thing that might be looked at state by state even where you could offer these kinds of requirements in K-6, you could start that early and you could do it in high school as well.
Female Speaker: I’m very excited about this K-6, I also think it’s probably good to look through the state’s requirements. Both of my sons in elementary are learning histograms.
Pennington: oh really?
Female Speaker: And they’re starting to learn probability. So, it might be good to look at what the states are requiring seeing if you can partner with that.
Martinez: excellent. I’m going to have to listen to the podcast, so I get all these good ideas.
Pennington: Well Wendy thank you so much for being here today
Bailer: Thank you Wendy.
Martinez: Well thank you very much for having me.
Pennington: That’s all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism, and Film as well as the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts or other places where you find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program, send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.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.
[applause]