My ASA story tracks the course of my career. When I was an undergraduate, a professor in one of my statistics classes at Miami University passed around information about the American Statistical Association and told us we should join. I did. Learning more about the profession and reading about schools and statistics degrees offered by universities and jobs in statistics followed (Thanks, Amstat News!).
Graduate studies in biostatistics at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a post-doc at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences preceded a return to Miami University as a faculty member. Almost as soon as I began my career as a professor, I became more actively involved with the ASA. I presented a talk to my local ASA chapter, which provided a great introduction to colleagues in the region. This talk also led to research collaborations that continue to the present. The Cincinnati Chapter also had a tradition of rotating leadership with representatives from academia, business/industry, and government. I went through the chapter officer ranks and developed a deeper connection with the local statistical community.
Following chapter activity, the ASA provided another community for me: sections. The Section on Statistics and the Environment was my first section home. I had a chance to serve as a section representative for the Joint Statistical Meetings and an ENAR program committee and as publications chair. The Section for Risk Analysis came calling later, and I was fortunate to connect with many old and new friends in the discipline.
As I moved into a chair position for a new department of statistics starting at Miami, I connected with the ASA Council of Academic Representatives. What an excellent group of department leaders who were generous with insights and encouragement for new department chairs. The ASA was represented when we celebrated the start of our statistics department with an inaugural conference; Ron Wasserstein, the then new executive director of the ASA joined us.
I was honored to start serving on the ASA Board of Directors a few years later. It was a wonderful chance to meet new people and help support the operation of a society I value. We discussed lots of interesting topics, including the International Prize in Statistics, which was being developed at that time. Also, the PStat/GStat accreditation process was ramping up and the Conference on Statistical Practice was launching.
It was during my time on the board that the Stats + Stories podcast came into being. After I team-taught News & Numbers in 2009 with Richard Campbell, a journalism colleague, we wanted to find a way to expand. Additionally, the ASA was preparing for its 175th anniversary. The intersection of these events led to Stats + Stories, which tells the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. Our goal was to tell engaging stories about statisticians, journalists, scientists, and others to a broad, general audience. We hoped the podcast would appeal to everyone; our goal was a Freakonomics type of interplay but with a statistician and a journalist instead of a behavioral economist and a journalist.
A conversation with Barry Nussbaum, ASA president-elect at the time, at the ASA Conference on Statistical Practice changed the podcast’s growth trajectory. I invited Nussbaum to be a guest on Stats + Stories and to talk about his experience as chief statistician of the US Environmental Protection Agency. We had an enjoyable conversation, which got him thinking about the ASA providing funding for a part-time producer/engineer that would allow Stats + Stories to have more frequent episode releases. Statistical communication was one of Nussbaum’s presidential initiatives, and he thought supporting the podcast was a way to further the initiative.
ASA Associate Executive Director Donna LaLonde acted as a liaison between the ASA and podcast, and Ron Wasserstein was a supporter and loyal listener. LaLonde and co-editor of CHANCE magazine Wendy Martinez, along with Significance magazine’s Brian Tarran and Anna Britten, helped identify articles that would make for promising episodes and contact the authors. The podcast even resulted in a 2022 book, Statistics Behind the Headlines, which was part of the ASA-CRC Series on Statistical Reasoning in Science and Society.
And now, the podcast that started when I was serving the ASA and expanded with the ASA’s support has come home. Stats + Stories became an ASA podcast in January. My journalism colleague Rosemary Pennington and I continue to learn about new topics with interesting guests, but now with the help of ASA Executive Producer Kim Gilliam.
My ASA story is more than four decades old, and my professional journey has been arm-in-arm with the ASA. The path of my career and the presence of many friends were the result of my connection with the ASA.
This series features ASA members who share their ASA stories. Our mission is to collect authentic and meaningful accounts of member experiences. If you have a story you would like to share, email the ASA’s marketing project manager, Kim Gilliam.
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