Listen to These 5 Podcasts for Statisticians
- Planet Money
- More or Less
- Data Skeptic
- Freakonomics
- The Effective Statistician
Statisticians are specialist mathematicians and these five podcasts for statisticians offer some new ways of thinking about statistics. Some of these podcasts focus on theories, research and best practices, and others focus more on guest interviews. Each of these podcasts could help a statistician consider a new perspective, try a new way of solving a problem or find some humor in what is often a dry subject.
1. Planet Money
The Planet Money podcast delves into finance, how people make financial decisions and why they often make emotional decisions instead of ones that are driven by data. The podcast also examines how statistics are used in economics as well as in personal finance. The episodes of Planet Money go in-depth on one issue, so the listener gets a chance to hear the whole background and what makes the story important. It has a lot of overlap with data science, statistics, finance, economics and psychology.
2. More or Less
More or Less is a podcast put on by BBC Radio. The episodes examine numbers reported by the media and whether or not they are reliable. Hosted by Tim Hartford, More or Less explores how the media comes to the numbers that it publishes and why people tend to believe that what they hear is true. The More or Less podcast uses formulas and statistical methods to attempt to verify what the media reports. They also examine the source of the data reported by the media. More or Less has a lot of archived content.
3. Data Skeptic
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, statisticians need to be creative at solving problems. A good podcast to listen to for inspiration and fresh ways of handling problems in statistics is Data Skeptic. This podcast examines data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. It does so in a way that draws the listener into the story. The approachable episodes are ideal for a new statistician or one who works in a silo and does not get a lot of exposure to other areas of expertise.
4. Freakonomics
Each episode of the Freakonomics podcast gets into a small issue or quirk within economics. The episode gets to the fine details of the issue. It has a lot of appeal for statisticians because it mostly focuses on numbers, with some theories and technical expertise added into each episode. A person should have a lot of familiarity with economics and statistical terms to make the most of what Freakonomics has to offer.
5. The Effective Statistician
The Effective Statistician podcast partners with an organization called Providing Statistical Insight to produce podcast episodes by statisticians for statisticians. It gets into the details of theories, tests of significance, the use of statistics in different types of research and how to use statistics when delivering information to non-statisticians. The episodes also get into how to become a leader in statistics and how to work with the scientific community on big problems that could benefit from statisticians.
Related Resource: 25 Most Affordable Master of Statistics Degrees
Each of these podcasts uploads fresh content at least once per week. The episodes last for 10 to 30 minutes, so they are easy to fit in during a workout, commute to work or coffee break. These five podcasts for statisticians are a good way to keep learning and gain some insight into what other statisticians are doing in their work.