Behind the Data

Mar 25 2025 14 ep. 38 mins 72

Behind the Data Podcast artwork

Data is all around us, but we spend very little time talking about where it comes from. Each week data scientist Andrea Jones-Rooy, Ph.D. brings you a story about one of the many types of datasets powering our lives. From political polls to measures of democracy, from tracking happiness to powering generative AI, join us on a journey to understand where these datasets that shape our lives actually come from, how to interpret them, and how we can use them to better understand our world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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How quantifying political attitudes can help us find common ground

Mar 25 2025 30 mins

We take it as a given that Americans are politically polarized, but how do we actually know if empirically this is the case? We talk with Prof. Patrick Egan (NYU) about how we can quantify something as abstract as a political attitude, why doing so helps us understand polarization, and how all of this helps reveal opportunities where we can make progress on areas where we're most d

Building a data warehouse for ALS

Mar 18 2025 46 mins

ALS is a fatal motor neuron disease that has no cure and is estimated to affect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Why is a cure, or even a meaningful treatment, so elusive? We talk with data engineer, scientist, and rare disease advocate Danielle Boyce at ALS TDI about her work helping us all better understand this terrible illness. While the topic is grim, Danielle provid

Spying on Elon Musk from space (and other adventures in tech data!)

Mar 11 2025 42 mins

Oceans of numbers come pouring out at us each day about the big tech companies -- whether it's spending on AI, iPhone sales, Tesla stocks ... or, lawsuits against SpaceX by Cards Against Humanity? -- senior tech correspondent Rani Molla is on the case. We talk with her about how to make sense of all the numbers coming our way, the power of zooming out and getting the (literal and f

Just how much misinformation is out there?

Mar 04 2025 51 mins

We all have ideas about how social media and misinformation are affecting us and our world. But, as our guest Prof. Joshua Tucker explains, received wisdom is not the same thing as scientific findings. Join us for a tour de force through how to break down "social media" and "misinformation" into researchable parts that can be theoretically and quantitatively studied -- as well as s

Season 2 trailer

Welcome to Season 2 of Behind the Data! We're going to explore brand new topics through the powerful lens of data, find common ground on some issues that are really dividing us, and even gaze into the night sky and the deep seas -- join us for an adventure, and then some, and walk away with a brand new way of looking at the world through the shared language of data. This season you

How to Be a Data Scientist about Your Own Life to Find Fulfillment

Dec 09 2024 54 mins

How do we know what career/path/decision is right for us? How can data science help? In this special season 1 finale, we are joined by Megan Hellerer, career coach to luminaries such as AOC, as well as the author of Directional Living: A Transformational Guide to Fulfillment in Work and Life to discuss why traditional career advice doesn't work, why instead we should treat our dail

The Art and Science of Measuring Democracy

Dec 02 2024 43 mins

Is democracy in decline around the world? This is a major question on many of our minds, and luckily for us there are very smart, thoughtful people working on tracking (as well as explaining, understanding, and predicting!) exactly this. We are joined by professor Brigitte Seim, who is a project manager for the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset, which is one of the biggest and

What Can We Actually Learn from Election Data?

Nov 25 2024 46 mins

Approximately ten billion different narratives about what happened in the recent US presidential election have emerged since said election. But how many of these narratives can be substantiated by data? How can we tell?Political scientist Seth Masket joins us to discuss how to make thoughtful inferences from this data, how and why to be skeptical of evidence-free opinions, and the

How Doctors Use Your Data (and How AI Can Help)

Nov 18 2024 69 mins

Dr. Steven Novella, clinical neurologist and host of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast joins us to share how he collects and analyzes data when he works with patients (there is so much more going on than I realized!) as well as how AI can hopefully improve the practice of medicine if we get it right. It's a longer episode than usual, but I hope you'll agree it's well wort

The (Often) False Promise of Personal Fitness Data

Nov 11 2024 39 mins

Science journalist and athlete Christie Aschwanden takes us inside the not-so-scientific world of the fitness and health data that's tracked by various apps we probably own and/or are tempted to buy, and she helps us more carefully discern what's actually useful to follow and what we're better off ignoring. Plus -- an existentially (and scientifically!) important discussion about t