Simply Statistics Future of Statistics Speakers - Two Truths, One Lie #futureofstats

28 Oct 2013

Our online conference live-streamed on Youtube is going to happen on October 30th 12PM-1PM Baltimore (UTC-4:00) time. You can find more information here or sign up for email alerts here. I get bored with the usual speaker bios at conferences so I am turning our speaker bios into a game. Below you will find three bullet pointed items of interest about each of our speakers. Two of them are truths and one is a lie. See if you can spot the lies and sign up for the unconference!

Hadley Wickham

• Created the ggplot2/devtools packages.
• Developed R’s first class system.
• Is chief scientist at RStudio.

Daniela Witten

• Developed the most popular method for inferring Facebook connections.
• Created the Spacejam algorithm for inferring networks.
• Made the Forbes 30 under 30 list twice as a rising scientific star.

Joe Blitzstein 

• A Professor of the Practice of Statistics at Harvard University.
• Created the first statistical method for automatically teaching the t-test.
• His statistics 101 course is frequently in the top 10 courses on iTunes U.

Hongkai Ji

• Developed the hmChIP database of over 2,000 ChIP-Seq and ChIP-Chip data samples.
• Coordinated the analysis of the orangutan genome project.
• Analyzed data to help us understand sonic-hedgehog mediated neural patterning.

Sinan Aral

• Coined the phrase “social networking potential”.
• Ran a large randomized study that determined the value of upvotes.
• Discovered that peer influence is dramatically overvalued in product adoption.

Hilary Mason

• Is a co-founder of DataGotham and HackNY
• Developed computational algorithms for identifying the optimal cheeseburger
• Founded the first company to create link sorting algorithms.