Dear CHANCE Colleagues,

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our world upside-down. Many of us have had to adjust our routines, sometimes juggling both work and dependent care duties from home. Others have taken on extra research responsibilities to find a vaccine, while still others have worked long shifts on the front lines. Tragically, many have lost their jobs or even their lives. What can a data scientist do?

We can use our skills to analyze data and provide insights. Accordingly, we at CHANCE received a higher-than-usual quantity of submissions for this issue, and I’d like to thank each submitter. We selected articles that touch on COVID-19 (both directly and indirectly), as well as other medical issues, providing a variety of topics that we hope readers will find interesting. I would also like to thank Jeff Morris, professor and director of the division of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania, who lent his expertise during the review process.

There is so much that we do not yet understand about COVID-19. Are there potential lessons that we can learn from previous health pandemics? In “Understanding COVID-19 in 2020 Through the Lens of the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ Epidemic,” authors Thomas Ewing, Steve Rigdon, and Ronald Fricker, Jr. compare Spanish flu statistics with those of the current COVID-19 pandemic. It is an enlightening historical perspective that you will not want to miss.

In keeping with the medical theme, Xiaoyan Yin, Toshimitsu Hamasaki, Dean Follmann, and Scott Evans discuss antibiotic resistance in the article “OutSMARTing Superbugs.” They present a trial design framework to inform clinicians and optimize patient outcomes. In “Emerging Methods for Oncology Clinical Trials,” Tianjian Zhou and Yuan Ji describe novel and promising trial designs in the fight against cancer, including discussion of the impact of COVID-19 on clinical oncology trials.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, online chess has exploded in popularity. An article published in Forbes magazine reported that “Chess.com had 1.5 million new subscribers in April, compared with 670,000 in January; the site also estimates five years of growth over three months.” Many chess organizations use the Elo rating system to rate player skill level. In “Statistical Analysis of the Elo Rating System in Chess,” Authur Berg explains the statistical framework of this rating system.

In columns, Howard Wainer and Debra Boka consider the challenging problem of estimating the COVID-19 death toll. Inspired by estimation methods for the 1665 Great Plague, they analyze today’s COVID-19 numbers in “Visual Revelations.” In “O Privacy, Where Art Thou?,” Dong Wang and Fang Liu discuss privacy risk and preservation in contact tracing of COVID-19. Mary Gray expounds the potential dangers of using models inappropriately in “The Odds of Justice.” In “Ethics and Statistics,” Andrew Gelman examines a published COVID-19 analysis and discusses the ethical duty of statisticians to present estimates and conclusions as “evidence” vs. ground truth. In “Taking a Chance in the Classroom,” Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel and Maria Tacket present classroom activities for exploring COVID-19 data. Finally, in “Book Reviews,” Christian Robert reviews Essentials of Probability Theory for Statisticians and A Computational Approach to Statistical Learning.

If you haven’t already, be sure to follow us on Twitter @ChanceStatsMag for the latest news.

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