Kim Gilliam, ASA Marketing and Communications Coordinator

Barry Nussbaum grew up in Jamaica, New York—a neighborhood in the borough of Queens—and is a product of the city’s public school system. He was motivated to pursue mathematics by a middle-school algebra class, even though he openly admits he was not one of his teacher’s best students.

Nussbaum recalls having to pass a New York state Regents exam to pass the algebra class, and it was just around the corner. So, with his back against the wall and only a week to prepare, he began cramming and soon realized algebra wasn’t so hard after all. Nussbaum found he liked it—a lot—and aced the all-important Regents exam. He had an aptitude for math and would pursue a mathematics degree in college.

For his undergraduate work, Nussbaum attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, before earning a master’s and doctorate from The George Washington University, where he would eventually do some adjunct teaching of graduate statistics.

Nussbaum joined the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the mid-70s and made his mark as the “statistics guy” who helped phase out leaded gasoline and phase in tighter car emission restrictions.

Part of the success behind these big wins for Nussbaum and the EPA was effective team communication. Nussbaum worked with policymakers, scientists, engineers, lawyers, and economists and quickly observed that to make an impact on policy and regulatory enforcement, succinct communication would be required to help these nonstatisticians understand the implications of his findings.

This interpersonal communications strategy became a foundation for his famous mantra, “It’s not what we said; it’s not what they heard; it’s what they say they heard.” The magic behind the mantra guides Nussbaum’s approach to professional collaborations, presentations, podcasts, and one-on-one conversations. He is old school. When possible, he prefers face-to-face engagement rather than phone calls, texts, and emails.
 
In 2017, Nussbaum served as ASA president and placed communication and engagement among his top presidential initiatives. He launched what was dubbed the “Asian initiative” and sought to address the needs of Asian students and young professionals in the field and learn how differences in cultures and customs might be affecting their involvement in statistical societies. He established a task force to determine the specific needs of this segment of the membership and help overcome language and cultural barriers. 

A Q&A with Barry Nussbaum 

What was your experience like at the EPA as the “statistics guy”? 
First, I’m not one of those “tree huggers.” At the EPA, we understand and respect the importance of the environment and strive to be well balanced about it. Regarding my experience, it was quickly apparent that with a team comprised of engineers to economists and everything in between, I needed to learn their vocabulary. Likewise, they needed to understand the numbers and how to integrate these into their minds to develop policy and regulatory action.

Early on, my team went after truck and car pollution, and boy you better understand both the data and the science around what’s coming out of a tailpipe. My job was to translate for policymakers the correlation analysis between various ways of measuring vehicle emissions and the resultant air pollution—with its serious impact on public health.

Based on the data, our recommendations—among other things—was to develop sampling protocols to efficiently sample in-use vehicles and demand recalls for those exceeding standards. One of our other major projects was to demonstrate how phasing out leaded gasoline was a truly cost-effective method of curbing harmful lead emissions. And we were successful. 

What was your interaction like with President Jimmy Carter during this time?
As one would expect, there was some pushback on the phasedown of leaded gasoline. On the heels of the gas crisis a few years earlier, when people were getting up at 3:00 a.m. to get in gas lines, the Commerce Department sought to increase the volume of gasoline by squeezing out as much from crude oil as possible. One way to do this is to allow slightly more lead into leaded gasoline. Demand was high. The policy question was, do you allow increases in the amount of elemental lead in leaded gasoline to benefit the nation’s commercial interests, or do you stay the course and phase it out in favor of public health. 

We got a call one morning. The EPA administrator needed a graphic showing the correlation analysis between the use of leaded gas in cars and its impact on public health. In particular, we’d been collecting data on blood lead levels in children. It is well known that lead ingestion or inhalation causes behavioral issues, low IQ, brain development problems, and more. Our data showed the blood lead levels going down as we began to phase out leaded gas. Interestingly, the numbers went up slightly in the summer because kids were outside playing ball in the street and were more exposed to the lead car exhaust, since lead is a heavy element.

The correlation between gasoline lead and blood lead was strong and convincing. It was a simple graphic on a piece of paper—nothing spiffy like you see today. Smudged, in fact, by the time it got to President Carter’s desk. But the simple graphic was persuasive, and the decision ended up in our favor. For a statistician, having that kind of impact on policy is as good as it gets. 

It just goes to show how important images and graphs can be in communicating your message—critical when you are trying to boil down complex information. They can see it and make sense of it. Amazing. 

Describe your communication style. 
Have you heard the strategy where you make believe you’re writing to your grandmother and try to write it in a way she would understand? I don’t particularly like that one. I have my own. I’ve given many talks over the years, and I look at the audience and make believe it’s about 10 minutes before noon. And then I spot that guy already wiggling in his seat looking at his watch; he can’t wait to get out to lunch. What are you going to say? How can you capture that guy’s attention? I like the challenge of getting to that one person. 

I was honored to be the dinner speaker at a Philadelphia Chapter meeting one year and a lady came up afterward and said, “You know, my husband is an officer in this chapter, and he drags me to this meeting every year. I’ve never understood any of the speakers until tonight. You really made it meaningful.” That was very, very gratifying. 

What do you think about social media and other communication platforms?
First, let me say I like podcasts. They are tremendous learning tools. I have a Twitter handle. I tweet from time to time but haven’t been too active lately. I know people tweet their thoughts and issues and share information back and forth. My preferred mode of communication? I like walking around the office and actually talking to people, rather than calling or sending an email. You can see the reaction on their face, they nod their heads, and we have a real discussion. I see more and more of my employees send emails and text messages, and the return message might be an emoji or something. An emoji!! We’re not even having a dialog here. It’s a problem.

And with the pandemic, we were all on Zoom. I’d have 45 people in my gallery view and we looked like we were on Hollywood Squares. How do I know if the students are understanding my lecture on sampling theory? Turning off their camera, reading the paper, doing whatever. And I’m still talking away with no visible reaction. I’m a guy who gives lots of talks and really works an audience, so Zoom is a little hard on me. 

I’ve had some colleagues who say, “Wow, Zoom is terrific. Instead of inviting a speaker and having to pay their expenses, they can present their seminar on Zoom.” Some people find that very appealing. Me? I’ll keep showing up to talk in person.