Stats + Stories

When it comes to studying conflict, there is obvious data to examine: spending on arms, the number of people killed or injured, and the amount of land won or lost. What's harder to track are the indirect effects of conflict, the ways it produces deaths over time, or its impacts on public health. Researchers are trying to find ways to account for the sometimes less obvious impacts of conflict, and that's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Xiao Hui Tai.

Each election cycle experts appear in the news talking about polling data. Many of these experts are political scientists and are often the only contact audiences may have with political scientists. While polling research is important to the field, there are other kinds of quantitative research in political science that can get overlooked. We learned about some of them today on this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Kevin Reuning.

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.

Robert Santos is vice president & chief methodologist at the Urban Institute as well as President-Elect of American Statistical Association. He has over 40 years of experience designing research and evaluation studies as well as sample surveys. His expertise includes quantitative and qualitative research design, sampling, survey operations, and statistical analysis; specialty areas include Hispanics, blacks, undocumented immigrants, and other disadvantaged populations.

Robert Santos is vice president & chief methodologist at the Urban Institute as well as President-Elect of American Statistical Association. He has over 40 years of experience designing research and evaluation studies as well as sample surveys. His expertise includes quantitative and qualitative research design, sampling, survey operations, and statistical analysis; specialty areas include Hispanics, blacks, undocumented immigrants, and other disadvantaged populations.

Simon Rogers is an award-winning data journalist, writer and speaker. Author of ‘Facts are Sacred‘, published by Faber & Faber in the UK, China and South Korea. He has also written a range of infographics for children books from Candlewick. Data editor on the News Lab team at Google, based in San Francisco, he is director of the Data Journalism Awards and teaches Data Journalism at Medill-Northwestern University in San Francisco and has taught at U Cal Berkeley Journalism school.

Simon Rogers is an award-winning data journalist, writer and speaker. Author of ‘Facts are Sacred‘, published by Faber & Faber in the UK, China and South Korea. He has also written a range of infographics for children books from Candlewick. Data editor on the News Lab team at Google, based in San Francisco, he is director of the Data Journalism Awards and teaches Data Journalism at Medill-Northwestern University in San Francisco and has taught at U Cal Berkeley Journalism school.

Kelly McConville is a survey statistician who develops estimation techniques that combine complex survey data with big data sources. Her work is used to estimate official statistics, related to canopy cover or occupational statistics, or to assess the impact of voter ID laws. She also enjoys teaching her students how to learn from data and introducing them to R (an open source statistical software program). She also involves her students in her work as the co-chair of two national programs: the Undergraduate Statistics Project Competition and the Electronic Undergraduate Statistics Research Conference.

Dr. Steven Lloyd Wilson is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016, and serves as the Project Manager of Computational Infrastructure for the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg. His research focuses on comparative democratization, cyber-security, and the effect of the Internet on authoritarian regimes. He also works on a variety of projects involving network and content analysis of social media around the world. 

Dr. Sara Cobb has a Ph.D. in Communication (UMASS Amherst) and is the Drucie French Cumbie Chair at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) at George Mason University, where she was, from 2001-2009, the dean/director. In her current role as faculty she teaches and conducts research on the relationship between narrative and conflict. She is also the Director of the Center for the Study of Narrative and Conflict Resolution at S-CAR, which provides a hub for scholarship on narrative approaches to conflict analysis and resolution. She is co-editor of the journal Narrative and Conflict: Explorations in Theory and Practice

Arturas Rozenas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at New York University. He was a National Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford. His research focuses on building theoretical models of authoritarian politics and testing them using natural experiments, field experiments, and machine learning tools. At NYU, he teaches courses on comparative politics and advanced statistical methods.

Megan Metzger is a Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research at the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi) Program at Stanford University. Before coming to Stanford, she completed a PhD in Politics at NYU as a member of the Social Media and Political Participation Lab and was a Postdoctoral scholar in Russian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Megan’s research is focused on how changes in technology change how individuals and states use and have access to information, and how this affects political behavior. Her current research is primarily focused on the role of RT as a component of Russian state strategies online.

Dr. Sara Cobb has a Ph.D. in Communication (UMASS Amherst) and is the Drucie French Cumbie Chair at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) at George Mason University, where she was, from 2001-2009, the dean/director. In her current role as faculty she teaches and conducts research on the relationship between narrative and conflict. She is also the Director of the Center for the Study of Narrative and Conflict Resolution at S-CAR, which provides a hub for scholarship on narrative approaches to conflict analysis and resolution. She is co-editor of the journal Narrative and Conflict: Explorations in Theory and Practice.

Joshua A. Tucker is Professor of Politics, affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, and affiliated Professor of Data Science at New York University. He is the Director of NYU’s Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia, a co-Director of the NYU Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) laboratory, and a co-author/editor of the award-winning politics and policy blog The Monkey Cage at The Washington Post. He serves on the advisory board of the American National Election Study, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, and numerous academic journals, and was the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Experimental Political Science. Follow him @j_a_tucker.

Matt Dempsey is the data editor at the Houston Chronicle. He worked on projects involving wildfires, state pensions, and the chemical industry. His passion for public records frequently leads to disclosure of data from all levels of government. His series Chemical Breakdown won the 2016 IRE Innovation award and the National Press Foundation's "Feddie" award. His work was a key part of the Chronicle's Pulitzer Prize finalist entry for Breaking News.

Andreas V. Georgiou is an economist with specializations in Monetary Theory and Stabilization Policy and in International Trade and Finance. After working for the International Monetary Fund, he returned to Greece in 2010 to head the newly established Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT)-the successor of the National Statistical Service of Greece following the onset of the economic crisis in Greece

Diane Coyle. Diane is founder of Enlightenment Economics , and Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She was recently appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for "services to Economics and the Public Understanding of Economics". She is also the author of the 2014 book -- GDP A Brief but Affectionate History.

Gary King (@kinggary) is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University . King focuses on innovations that span the range from statistical theory to practical application. His methods are used extensively in many fields of academia, government, consulting, and private industry. He is a founder, and inventor of the original technology for, Learning Catalytics, Crimson Hexagon, Perusall, and other firms. He is a founder, and inventor of the original technology for, Learning Catalytics, Crimson Hexagon, Perusall, and OpenScholar

Peter Guttorp (@pgseattle) is a Professor at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, Norway, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is also a vice-president of the International Statistical Institute . His research focuses on stochastic models of scientific data and their statistical analysis. He has worked in seismology, hydrology, climatology, hematology and biology.

Davina P. Durgana (@DavinaDurgana) is Assistant Professor and Senior Practitioner Faculty at SIT Graduate Institute , human rights statistician who has developed models to assess risk and vulnerability to modern slavery. She is a Report Co-Author and Senior Statistician on the Walk Free Foundation's Global Slavery Index . She is the 2016 Recipient of the American Statistical Association's Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate of the Year Award and a Forbes Top 30 Under 30 in Science for 2017 for her work on statistical modeling, human security theory, and human trafficking. She was a contributing author to the 2017 Chance issue (Chance Volume 30) on modern slavery

David Banks is a statistician at Duke University. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and a former editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Statistics and Public Policy . His major areas of research include risk analysis, syndromic surveillance, agent-based models, dynamic text networks, and computational advertising.

David Banks is a statistician at Duke University. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and a former editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Statistics and Public Policy . His major areas of research include risk analysis, syndromic surveillance, agent-based models, dynamic text networks, and computational advertising.

Linda J. Young is Chief Mathematical Statistician and Director of Research and Development of USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service . She oversees efforts to continually improve the methodology underpinning the Agency's collection and dissemination of data on every facet of U.S. agriculture. She works on the surveys designed to characterize agricultural activity in the US.

Linda J. Young is Chief Mathematical Statistician and Director of Research and Development of USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service . She oversees efforts to continually improve the methodology underpinning the Agency's collection and dissemination of data on every facet of U.S. agriculture. She works on the surveys designed to characterize agricultural activity in the US.

Jeri M. Mulrow is the Acting Director for the Bureau of Justice Statistics . BJS's mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. BJS is a component of the Office of Justice Programs in the Department of Justice.

John H. Thompson is the 24th Census Bureau Director. The Census Bureauprepares the 2020 Census and over more than 100 other censuses and surveys, which measure America's people, places and economy, and provide the basis for crucial economic indicators such as the unemployment rate.

John H. Thompson is the 24th Census Bureau Director. The Census Bureauprepares the 2020 Census and over more than 100 other censuses and surveys, which measure America's people, places and economy, and provide the basis for crucial economic indicators such as the unemployment rate.

Andrew Flowers (@andrewflowers) is a freelance data journalist and a former quantitative editor at FiveThirtyEight.com . He writes about economics, trade, welfare, sports and more.