Season 4, Episode 3: The UMAP Algorithm: Look Pretty and Do As Little As Possible

In this episode, In Plain English joins the discourse on the All of Us Genomics project and their use of UMAP, an algorithm that reduces complex data to 2 dimensions. Join guests Konrad Kording, William Lima, and Jake Walker to learn why this mathematical model made such a splash on Twitter, and how scientists can analyze and communicate large data sets more rigorously.

Bad Science: the Bogus Case for More Cops

In this bonus episode of In Plain English, I talk with defense lawyer Alec Karakatsanis about the paper “The Injustice of Under-policing in America,” by Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani. We cover the undisclosed assumptions, missing statistics, and cynical worldview behind this piece of propaganda masked as a scientific paper. You can read Alec’s response…