Editor’s Letter—Vol. 28, No. 1
Dear CHANCE Colleagues,
CHANCE has a new tagline, “Using Data to Advance Science, Education, and Society.” This tagline reflects a broader mission that is more consistent with CHANCE activities.
I would like to acknowledge the valuable service of retiring column editor Mark Glickman (and his column “Here’s to Your Health”) and editors Shane Reese and Shojaeddin Chenouri. The dedicated efforts of these folks have helped to make CHANCE the success that it is today.
Please join me in welcoming our new editors, Jim Albert (Bowling Green State University), Dean Follmann (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health), and Toshimitsu Hamasaki (National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center of Japan). We also have a new columnist, Mary Gray, and her column “The Odds of Justice.” Please see Mary’s inaugural column “P-values: What Do They Prove?” in this issue. You may view their bios as well as the bios for all of the editors on the “About Us” page.
In our first article, Guro Dørum and Mariam Mjærum Bouzga discuss forensic genetics and likelihood ratios in “Urns and Forensics.”
Sam Behseta then interviews CHANCE’s own long-time columnist (more than 25 years!) Howard Wainer. Howard discusses his CHANCE column over the years and his distinguished career. Howard’s words of wisdom: Follow your bliss, and keep learning new things by collaborating with younger people.
W.J. Hurley discusses an important Canadian Supreme Court decision, and uses Bayes theorem to evaluate the pros and cons of mandatory drug testing in the Canadian workplace.
In “A Bellman View of Jesse Livermore,” Nick Polson and Jan Hendrik Witte examine legendary trader Jesse Livermore’s rules for trading and how they are reflected in Richard Bellman’s principle of optimality, a foundation for dynamic programming.
Sam Behseta and Michelle Dunn then interview Glen Whitney, the president, founder, and executive director of the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) in Manhattan. Glen discusses the initiation of the museum and exhibits on probability.
In the CHANCE columns, Nicole Lazar leads off discussing Big Data and privacy in “The Big Picture.” In Shane Jensen’s “A Statistician Reads the Sports Pages,” guest columnist Andrew Thomas discusses what can be learned from hexagonal plots of NHL data, a strategy that has been employed in basketball. Kees Mulder reviews Circular Statistics in R by Pewsey, Neuhauser, and Ruxton. Andrew Gelman discusses disagreements about the strength of evidence in “Ethics and Statistics.”
Don’t forget to give them a CHANCE!
Scott Evans