Dear CHANCE Colleagues,

I’m excited to be coming on board as the new CHANCE editor. As I’ve talked with many of the editors and subscribers during the transition, it’s easy to see that CHANCE holds a special place in the hearts of many.

I’d like to take a moment to applaud Scott Evans for his six-year run as executive editor. He has overseen 24 issues, including 13 on special topics. Scott has graciously agreed to continue with CHANCE as an advisory editor.

I’d also like to thank several outgoing editors for their commitment to ensuring quality articles: Dean Follmans, Toshimitsu Hamaaskis, Tom Lanes, Michael P. McDermotts, Kary Myerss, Babak Shahbabas, Di Cooks (“Visiphilia” column), Chris Franklins (“K-12 Education” column), Shane Jensens (“A Statistician Reads the Sports Pages” column), and Dalene Stangls (advisory editor and “Taking a Chance in the Classroom” column editor).

I’m also happy to announce three new editors: Justin Jacobs, Adam Ciarleglio, and Diane Uschner. Justin is an NBA researcher and will serve as our new sports editor with a column called “Beyond the Box Score.” Adam and Diane are both assistant professors at George Washington University. Adam will create a new column called “Machine Learning Learning Machine.” You can learn more about them, as well as the other editors, on the CHANCE website .

Another addition is our new Twitter account, @ChanceStatsMag. If you are on Twitter, be sure to follow us. We’d love to connect to our readers.

In this issue of CHANCE, we have two articles for sports enthusiasts as baseball season and hockey playoffs are just around the corner. Daniel Eck investigates the possible effect of nostalgia on the representation of previous-era baseball players among the game’s all-time greatest players. Zia Zaman and Hong Ming Tan analyze the “Pulling the Goalie” strategy used by hockey teams when they are down and modify this popular strategy by considering state of play.

Every data scientist knows the importance of cleaning messy data and the amount of time that is often necessary to complete this task. Without this step, we end up with “garbage in, garbage out,” but it can be difficult to justify such time spent to stakeholders. Christine Chai shows examples that data scientists can use to help non-technical collaborators appreciate the data cleaning activity.

Finally, to round out the issue, Richard William Farebrother gives us a history lesson on neopythagorean means and measures of dispersion as an alternative to the measures that we use today.

In columns, Howard Wainer and guest writer Michael Friendly consider the role of graphics in the discovery of plate tectonics in “Visual Revelations.” In “Book Reviews,” Christian Robert and guest, Benoît H.L. Beck, review Bayesian Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Medical Treatments, The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science, and Prime Suspects.

Amanda Peterson-Plunkett

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