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Stats + Stories: Birds of Probability

Amalia Bastos is a biologist and photographer who is currently a Ph.D candidate at The University of Auckland. She is part of the Animal Minds lab and work with three different species: dogs, kea, and New Caledonian crows.
via Stats and Stories

WYSO is partnering with Stats and Stories, a podcast produced at Miami University.

We've all heard the stories about sign language-speaking great apes and problem-solving dolphins, but which animal species exhibit statistical thinking abilities and probability-based inference? That is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories John Bailer and Richard Campbell, former chair of Miami's Media, Journalism and Film department are joined by Amalia Bastos. Bastos is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Auckland who has been working with animals to see how evolutionary pressures have shaped the minds of different species. She recently co-authored a paper describing experiments that demonstrate that a parrot, the New Zealand Kea, is able to use data to make decisions. 

Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University's Departments of Statistics and Media, Journalism and Film and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter or iTunes. If you'd like to share your thoughts on our program, send your e-mail to statsandstories@miamioh.edu and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.