My name is Regina Nuzzo and I’m a Professor and Communicator. I love to write and speak about all things Statistics and Data.
Dr. Regina Nuzzo is a freelance science writer and professor in Washington, DC. After studying engineering as an undergraduate, she earned her PhD in Statistics from Stanford University. Currently she’s a Professor teaching Statistics in American Sign Language at Gallaudet University, the world’s only university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and a part-time Lecturer at Stanford University, where she co-teaches a course for the Masters in Clinical Informatics Management program in the School of Medicine.
Dr. Nuzzo is also a graduate of Science Communication program at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Her science journalism specialties center around data, probability, statistics, and the research process. Her work has appeared in Nature, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Reader’s Digest, New Scientist, and Scientific American, among others. Her feature article on p-values in Nature earned the American Statistical Association’s 2014 Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award.
Dr. Nuzzo has been invited to speak around the world to a variety of audiences about her work, such as why we just can’t understand p-values, how our brain can fool us during data analysis, what happens when people abuse and misuse statistics, and tips and tricks for communicating anything with numbers and statistics.
Download CVPhD in Statistics
Stanford University
BS in Industrial Engineering
University of South Florida
Certificate in Science Communication (Journalism)
University of California - Santa Cruz
I started teaching when I was 13 (my classmates’ parents paid me to tutor their kids) and haven’t really stopped since. I currently teach statistics at Gallaudet University and summers at Stanford University, and I’ve developed courses and workshops for private companies and organizations on statistics, writing, and data communication.
As a freelance science journalist since 2005 I’ve written about everything from penises to p-values, from humans’ head lice to horses’ nasal breathing strips, from the neuroimaging of criminal recidivism to the neuroscience of orgasms. A recent project involved teaming up with an artist to develop an illustrated feature about statistical issues in forensic science.
My Ph.D. is in Statistics, and I love how stats is both the gas pedal and the brake in the scientific progress machine. Most people think of statistics as just numbers, or formulas, or maybe even methods — but I see statistics as a philosophy and outlook on the world. Statistics is like Journalism: Just like journalists find the story amid the facts, statisticians find the signal amid the noise.
I’ve given more than five dozen talks around the world on how we fool ourselves with statistics, what p-values can really tell us, how to communicate data in a human-centered way, and what journalists need to know about statistics. I’ve given several keynotes and plenaries for a variety of audiences. One of my most popular talks is titled Five Problems with P-Values as Illustrated through Five Stories about Sex.
I try to give my students – and the journalists I consult for – an appreciation for mucking around in the data. I’m enthusiastic about modern tools for teaching data analysis and use R with Quarto and lots of tidyverse and real data. In my teaching I flip the typical learning process: We start with the data and harness our natural curiosity to develop questions and hypotheses — and then we learn the tools to satisfy our curiosity.
I use a cochlear implant, which I’ve affectionately named “Tiny,” short for “Tiny Brain Computer.” Without it, I’m deaf. I got Tiny as an adult, after I’d already been missing a sizeable chunk of my hearing since birth. So my brain has had to learn how to hear many sounds for the first time. Adult neuroplasticity is amazing.
A few of my favorites
Just a taste
