dana-farber data science podcast by Dana Farber Cancer Institute

What is machine learning? What distinguishes it from statistics? Daniela Witten, PhD is Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics at University of Washington, and the Dorothy Gilford Endowed Chair in Mathematical Statistics. Dr. Witten develops statistical machine learning methods for high-dimensional data, with a focus on unsupervised learning.

How prevalent is image alteration in biomedical research publications? What counts as manipulation? Elisabeth Bik, PhD, Principal at Harbers Bik, LLC, is a science consultant and microbiome, science integrity and image forensics expert.

How should we teach data science? Jeff Leek, PhD is a Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, co-editor of Simply Statistics, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Data Science Lab and co-founder of Problem Forward Data Science.

How can we best communicate our data science findings using #dataviz? Alberto Cairo, PhD is a journalist, designer, and the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami (UM). He is the author of How Charts Lie, The Truthful Art, The Functional Art, and Nerd Journalism. He is also the director of the visualization program at UM’s Center for Computational Science.

How does data transform policy making? Arnaldo and Rafa discuss the importance of data-driven decisions in governance and the state of data in PuertoRico.

How is statistics used to predict elections? Andrew and Rafa discuss the U.S. 2020 Election and the role of the electoral college, polls, mail-in ballots and voter data in forecasting results and post-election outcomes.

What do we mean by diversity in STEM and why is it important? What works and what doesn't to increase diversity in data science?

What does the future hold for statistics education? How can we improve public data literacy? Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, PhD is Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at University of Cambridge, dedicated to improving the way that quantitative evidence is used in society. He has been an applied statistician for over 40 decades and has been involved in several projects with important implications. His academic work has focused in Bayesian statistics, including being co-developer of BUGS and winBUGS, biomedical applications and science communication. He has won numerous awards for his work including being knighted in 2014. He is the author of a very popular book The Art of Statistics, Learning from Data.

What's it really like to be a dean? How do academic administrators use data collection and analysis to guide decisions?

While we do cancer clinical trials to test drugs, exposures that increase risks are found with observational studies. These have also been instrumental in highlighting disparities. Tim Rebbeck and Rafa Irizarry discuss the challenges these studies pose.