The Indecisive Statistics Professor - with Chris Oates

About this episode

Chris Oates discusses his journey as a statistics professor and his career indecision.

Chris Oates is a professor of statistics at Newcastle University - he got there despite being somewhat indecisive about his career. This episode was made possible by the Leverhulme Trust, a UK-based organisation which funds ambitious blue skies research across various disciplines - https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk Professor Oates was the recipient of prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize - https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/philip-leverhulme-prize-winners-2023 See a video with Professor Oates on Numberphile describing the Stein Paradox - https://youtu.be/FUQwijSDzg8 Chris Oates webpage - https://oates.work Numberphile is supported by Jane Street - https://www.numberphile.com/jane-street Thanks also to Ben Delo. You can support Numberphile on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/numberphile Here are our Patrons - https://www.numberphile.com/patrons

People in this episode

Host: Brady Haran

Guest: Chris Oates

Topics covered

• statistics
• career indecision
• academic research
• prizes in academia
• Stein Paradox

Keywords

• statistics
• career
• research
• prize
• Stein Paradox

Sponsors

Jane Street

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Newcastle University, Leverhulme Trust, Philip Leverhulme Prize, Numberphile

More episodes of The Numberphile Podcast

• Rockets, Religion & Rejection - with Destin Sandlin from Smarter Every Day · March 26, 2026 · 1h 6m
• The Man Who Loves Weather - with Chief Meteorologist Dan Harris · March 18, 2026
• The Storm is Coming - with Hugo Duminil-Copin · January 21, 2026 · 34 min
• Making Math Videos in Ukraine - with Sashko Olenchenko · November 9, 2025 · 51 min
• Everything You Wanted To Know About Numberphile - with Brady Haran · August 29, 2025 · 60 min
• Counting Crayons - with Po-Ling Loh · December 14, 2024 · 39 min