Moon Duchin on Voting & Electoral Districts

Moon Duchin on Voting & Electoral Districts: If you live in the United States, have you already voted? If not, go vote! The bedrock of American democracy is the idea of citizens voting for candidates to represent their interests. However, determining how to cluster voters into districts has always been a fraught topic, particularly when it comes to ensuring that minorities have representation. How can we create the most fair electoral districts? How can we use geometric topographical analysis to recognize gerrymandering strategies like “packing” and “cracking”? We brought in Tufts University mathematician and founder of the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group Redistricting Lab Moon Duchin to help us discuss these pressing issues. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Duchin’s collaboration about ranked choice voting: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3778021 Brief review of Duchin’s scientific paper: https://www.n by Carry the Two

23 min listen

Tiffany Christian on City-Friendly Animal Species: Our last episode featuring Statistician-in-Residence Tiffany Christian (at least for now), dives into sampling methods. How can we track animal populations, especially those who share our urban environment with us? Ecologists and statisticians have found methods to track everything from coyotes to Canadian geese and can see how their populations are changing over time. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Video explaining the statistics of capture mark recapture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=240806aPHVg Collection of examples using capture mark recapture: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eesc/science/capture-mark-recapture-science?qt-science_center_objects=0 Urban coyote research: https://urbancoyoteresearch.com/coyote-info/basics-studying-coyotes Sampling methodology: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability/designing-studies/sampling-methods-stats/a/sampling-methods-rev by Carry the Two

14 min listen

Allyson Ettinger on GPT-3: How can a teacher know if a student actually wrote their book report, or if a computer did it? Are AI writers coming for journalists’ jobs? What does it mean when a language processing model can write its own computer code upon request? These are all questions currently sparked by GPT-3, a free online natural language processing artificial intelligence by Open AI. This isn’t your dimestore chatbot. GPT-3 takes advantage of a whole new method of artificial intelligence research, called neural nets, to create plays, write code, and even roleplay as a historical figure. But what are the limitations to this kind of AI? In this episode of Carry the Two, University of Chicago professor Allyson Ettinger walks us through how GPT-3 manages to sound so human and where and how it fails in interesting ways. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Use natural language processing to talk with a TV character or historical figu by Carry the Two

41 min listen

Tiffany Christian on Wetland Monitoring: Wetlands like the marshes located just outside the city of New Orleans, LA are often overlooked, but these ecosystems provide many vital services. Wetlands, like all ecosystems, are under threat by climate change and particularly the increased tropical storms and hurricanes that tear across our coasts. So how can we monitor vast areas of wetlands to check their health, year after year? Statistician-in-Residence Tiffany Christian explains how researchers can remotely monitor wetland health and spot disruption of annual growth cycles. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Review of storm effects on wetlands: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1872203215000657#:~:text=Impacts%20of%20tropical%20storms%20on%20wetland%20landscape%20changes,change%20wetland%20morphology%20and%20elevation Using remote sensing to detect changes in wetlands growing season: https://www.sciencedirect.com/ by Carry the Two

15 min listen

Winter Hiatus: We're taking a short break to prepare for the new year and season 2. So stay tuned! Find our transcript here: LINK Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (instagram) IMSI.institute This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348. by Carry the Two

2 min listen

Mike Menzel on NASA's JWST Launch: Imagine trying to unfold 5 layered, thin metallic sheets, each the size of a tennis court without tearing or snagging the material. Now imagine doing it in the vacuum of space, at a distance much farther than the moon, and that a multimillion dollar project relies on your success. That provides a bit of perspective for the massive undertaking that was the James Webb Space Telescope (or JWST). In this episode of Carry the Two, we hear from NASA lead systems engineer, Mike Menzel, all about designing and testing the solar shield for JWST. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: JWST’s orbit: https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html General physics of the JWST: https://www.wired.com/story/the-physics-of-the-james-webb-space-telescope/ Video of JWST unfolding (referenced in the episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg-YI0T-4Mk Coordinating the 18 mirrors: https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsg by Carry the Two

32 min listen

Tandy Warnow on Evolutionary Trees: Darwin first proposed evolution as a way that species change and diverge to fill niches in their environment. This observation led to the first, rudimentary species trees, showing ancestors and descendants across genetic lineages. But this work is far from settled. As we continue to collect more and richer data sets from species, whether they be plants, bacteria, or mammals like ourselves, researchers need new and better methods for building phylogenetic trees. That’s where Tandy Warnow, from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, comes in. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Tandy’s talk for IMSI’s workshop, Eliciting Structure in Genomics Data: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/theory-and-practice-for-large-scale-phylogeny-estimation/ History of the ‘Tree of Life’: https://www.nature.com/articles/540038a Multispecies coalescent process: https://academic.oup.com/book/26340/chapter-abstract/19 by Carry the Two

31 min listen

Jude Higdon on Small Town Policing: We have another guest host this episode, with Jude Higdon. Jude is the Chief Information Officer at Bennington College and co-founder of the QSIDE Institute. Jude led the charge during IMSI’s Research Collaboration Workshop that was aimed at addressing small town policing. Using the road map laid out by the Small Town Policing Accountability (SToPA) Lab, Jude’s team developed a toolkit for procuring, structuring, and analyzing policing data in small towns that lack the resources and systems to make their own data public. By the end of a month at IMSI, Jude’s team had a prototype that can empower small community-based participatory action research. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: QSIDE Institute: https://qsideinstitute.org/ Small Town Policing Accountability previous research: https://bigdata.duke.edu/projects/small-town-policing-accountability/ Submit a Research Collaboration W by Carry the Two

32 min listen

Kathryn Leonard and Axel Carlier on Crowdsourcing for Math Research: We’re still celebrating Mathematical and Statistical Awareness Month here at Carry the Two. This time, we’re taking a look at how anyone can get involved with research and help move mathematics (or statistics) forward. We explore the differences between citizen science, community science, and crowd sourcing and how one group of researchers used an international scavenger hunt to collect data. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Peer-reviewed article of today’s paper: The 2D shape structure dataset: A user annotated open access database - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0097849316300528 Follow-up research: T. Blanc-Beyne, G. Morin, K. Leonard, A. Carlier, S. Hahmann, A Salience Measure for 3D Shape Decomposition and Sub-parts Classification, Graphical Models 99:22-30, September 2018. K. Leonard, G. Morin, S. Hahmann, A. Carlier, by Carry the Two

27 min listen

Benson Farb on Math and Mentorship: Happy Mathematical and Statistical Awareness Month! To celebrate, hosts Sadie and Ian decided to take a peek behind the curtain and see what it is that pure mathematicians do all day. This episode follows a conversation with University of Chicago Math Professor Benson Farb as he explains how he approaches mentoring future mathematicians and what got him into his field in the first place. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot more about luck and timing than you’d expect! Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: UChicago Math Pizza Seminar: https://math.uchicago.edu/~pizzaseminar/ Math Genealogy Tree: https://www.mathgenealogy.org/index.php Stereotype Threat Research: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-psych-073115-103235 More on Benson: https://news.uchicago.edu/profile/benson-farb Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://science by Carry the Two

35 min listen

Maike Sonnewald on Modeling Oceanic Currents: Welcome to the first episode of Carry the Two’s collaboration with the American Geophysical Union’s Third Pod from the Sun! In this episode, we get our feet wet with physical oceanographer, Maike Sonnewald. Maike explains how the ocean currents interplay with our warming atmosphere and what that means for our climate. Using machine learning to build climate models, Maike analyzes how things like greenhouse gases are warming our oceans and changing the pattern of currents. And don’t forget to listen to Maike’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Maike: https://thirdpodfromthesun.com/2023/05/05/wave-and-means/ Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Hear Maike’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/elucidating-ecological-complexity-unsupervised-learning-d by Carry the Two

25 min listen

Spring Hiatus: We're taking a short break to prepare for the rest of Season 2 and our collaboration with AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun. So stay tuned! Find our transcript here: LINK Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (instagram) IMSI.institute This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348. by Carry the Two

2 min listen

Heather Zheng on Privacy and AI by Carry the Two

37 min listen

Carrie Diaz Eaton on Community-Driven Data Science: Joining the helm as cohost, Bates Professor Carrie Diaz Eaton leads this week’s exploration of how to build a data science tool, not just for local activists, but with them. We begin with how the partnership between the environmental justice leadership program Nuevas Voces and Carrie’s team of interdisciplinary math researchers first met. Then, we hear from the members of Carrie’s Research Collaboration Workshop team as they worked at a breakneck pace here at IMSI to have a completed prototype by the end of a month. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Listen to Carrie’s first feature on Carry the Two: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/carrie-diaz-eaton-on-equity-in-policy-documents/id1629115184?i=1000567232994 Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council: https://wrwc.org/wp/ Nuevas Voces: https://wrwc.org/wp/nuevas-voces-graduation/ Submit a Research Collaboration W by Carry the Two

30 min listen

Dan Cooley on the Colorado Fire Season: Predicting weather is already a difficult statistical challenge, but it becomes even more complex when trying to predict rare weather events. Dan Cooley, a professor in the statistics department at Colorado State University, uses extreme value analysis to model these rare events. In today’s episode, we ask Dan how his work can help explain the changing frequency and severity of wildfires in Colorado and how climate change might be playing a key role. Don’t forget to listen to Dan’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the episode here: LINK Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Hear Dan’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/transformed-linear-methods-for-multivariate-extremes-and-application-to-climate/ More on the Fire Weather Index: https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/pms437/cffdrs/fire-weathe by Carry the Two

23 min listen

Matt Huber on Modeling Paleoclimates: Today we speak with a non-mathematician who uses mathematical tools to understand our planet’s past climates and what they might be able to tell us about our future. Matt Huber, from Purdue University, tells us how the paleoclimate had sudden, rapid shifts in the climate that our current climate models aren’t good at predicting. So, if we’re on the precipice of another rapid shift, we might need to start employing different models. And don’t forget to listen to Matt’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Matt: LINK Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Hear Matt’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/the-dynamics-and-impacts-of-moist-heat-stress/ Younger Dryas event in Day After Tomorrow: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/02/25/metro/researchers-say-ancient-day by Carry the Two

26 min listen

Jane Baldwin on Modeling Climate Change Hazards: We are continuing our collaboration between Carry the Two and the American Geophysical Union’s Third Pod from the Sun with another episode! Jane Baldwin’s research centers issues of equity when it comes to understanding climate change’s impact on the global population. In this episode, we hear how Jane gets clever with data sources to better understand risk and vulnerability to tropical cyclones in the Philippines and discusses the importance of building useful climate models. And don’t forget to listen to Jane’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Jane: https://thirdpodfromthesun.com/2023/05/12/solving-for-climate-do-go-chasing-hurricanes/ Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Jane’s presentation at IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/the-missing-links-in by Carry the Two

23 min listen

Angel Hsu on Urbanization and Climate Change: Researchers become interested in their fields through all sorts of unique paths. Today’s guest, Angel Hsu of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, came to climate research from a public policy background. She uses her work to help inform local communities how policy decisions affect different groups’ risk to extreme heat and the heat island effect. Specifically, she uses local and global data sets to track heat stress across city neighborhoods and show how those can differ based on neighborhood income. Don’t forget to listen to Angel’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Angel: LINK Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Hear Angel’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/detecting-and-attributing-disparities-in-urban-heat/ Data Driver Lab website: by Carry the Two

25 min listen

Summer Hiatus: We're taking a short break to prepare for our next series of episodes, looking at mathematics and statistics in Hollywood. So stay tuned! Find our transcript here: LINK Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (instagram) IMSI.institute Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348. by Carry the Two

2 min listen

Kristie Ebi on Climate Change & Global Health: Turn on the news during the spring and you’ll hear how seasonal allergies are being made worse by climate change. But it turns out the seasonal sniffles are some of the smallest health consequences of our rapidly shifting climate. Droughts and floods don’t just damage the local ecosystem, they also have real, measurable effects on human health. In this episode of Carry the Two, we hear from University of Washington’s Kristie Ebi, who has helped lead research on the health impacts of climate change. And don’t forget to listen to Kristie’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Kristie: LINK HERE Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Kristie’s presentation at IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/detection-and-attribution-of-the-health-impacts-of-climate-change/ Cl by Carry the Two

24 min listen

Kevin Grazier on Orbital Dynamics in Foundation: If you’ve seen the first season of Apple TV’s Foundation, you probably noticed how heavily the show relies on ideas based in mathematics and statistics. However, while the idea of a field of research called psycho-history seems far-fetched, some of the show's scenes are much closer to reality than you might realize. In this episode, we hear from planetary physicist and television science advisor Kevin Grazier about how researchers can help advise TV projects and what that actually looks like. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov: https://www.goodreads.com/series/43939-foundation-chronological-order Foundation (tv series) season 1 promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4QYV5GTz7c The Cassini mission: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/overview/ Orbital dynamics: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-0802-8_1 by Carry the Two

25 min listen

Robert Rosner and Paul Wilson on Oppenheimer: The world, and the US in particular, have a complicated history with nuclear fission. Splitting atoms led to both the development of nuclear energy and weapons with catastrophic power. In the film Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan explores these issues. Here we expand this examination to the seminal work done in the Midwest. In this episode of Carry the Two, we speak with nuclear engineer from the University of Wisconsin, Paul Wilson, and University of Chicago physicist, Robert Rosner. They unveil how the University of Chicago was a key research site that tested theories of Oppenheimer and his colleagues, allowing the United States to win the race in building a nuclear weapon. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: The first nuclear reactor, explained: https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/first-nuclear-reactor-explained American Prometheus (novel that Oppenheimer is based by Carry the Two

32 min listen

Jamie Barty on Visual Effects in Television: Were you impressed by the underwater scenes in Avatar 2? Have you spent hours trying to figure out how they built the ice wall in Game of Thrones? Everything from big effects like these to smaller hidden visual effects like creating a skyline for an indoor set fall under the purview of visual effects. In this episode of Carry the Two, we get a behind-the-scenes tour of how Fuse FX effects supervisor Jamie Barty from I’m a Virgo leads a team to achieve these effects - and the copious amounts of mathematics that come into play! Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Fuse FX: https://fusefx.com/ Course on the mathematics behind visual effects: https://www.fxphd.com/details/215/ I’m a Virgo: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13649510/ Entertainment Community Fund: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/ Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/ by Carry the Two

30 min listen

Caitlin Parrish and Allyson Ettinger on AI & the WGA Strike: In this classic episode, we explore how GPT-3, a free online natural language processing artificial intelligence by Open AI, does and doesn’t work. Make sure to stick around until the end for an update on how AI is a core demand between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. GPT-3 takes advantage of a whole new method of artificial intelligence research, called neural nets, to create plays, write code, and even roleplay as a historical figure. But what are the limitations to this kind of AI? University of Chicago professor Allyson Ettinger walks us through how GPT-3 manages to sound so human and where and how it fails in interesting ways. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: When GPT-3 accidentally lies: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063487/meta-large-language-model-ai-only-survived-three-days-gpt-3 by Carry the Two

40 min listen

Carry the Two Farewell (for now): Find our transcript here: LINK Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Sadie Witkowski: https://www.sadiewit.com/, @SadieWit This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348. by Carry the Two

6 min listen

Tara Kerin on The Last of Us: Could a fungus really wipe out the majority of humans, as shown in the HBO (Max) series The Last of Us? How realistic is the show’s portrayal of epidemiology? Guest and project scientist at UCLA, Tara Kerin explores these questions and how statistics are a core tool in her field of research. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: The San Diego Comic Con International masquerade ball: https://www.comic-con.org/cci/newsletter/sunday How to calculate R0 (R-naught): https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/understanding-predictions-what-is-r-naught/ Tara’s work on HIV: https://cch.ucla.edu/about-atn-cares/ More on R0: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/1/17-1901_article More on the science in The Last of Us: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157842018/the-science-that-spawned-fungal-fears-in-hbos-the-last-of-us Entertainment Community Fund: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/ Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://s by Carry the Two

18 min listen

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Moon Duchin on Voting & Electoral Districts

Moon Duchin on Voting & Electoral Districts

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