Lectures on Tap - "Political Polls: Can We Trust Them?"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Political Polls: Can We Trust Them?"

🎙 Speaker: Dr. Andrea Jones-Rooy

Every election cycle, we’re flooded with political polls, forecasts, and hot takes—alongside a chorus of voices insisting, “Polls are always wrong, ignore them!” So which is it? In this engaging lecture, political and data scientist Dr. Andrea Jones-Rooy will unpack how polls actually work and what they really can (and can’t) tell us about elections and public opinion.

Drawing on their experience as a former quantitative researcher at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, Dr. Jones-Rooy will show you how to evaluate polling methods, interpret margins of error, and spot red flags in the numbers we see every day. You’ll leave with practical tools for making sense of political data—and for thinking more critically about all kinds of numerical claims in the news and beyond.

Dr. Andrea Jones-Rooy is a political and data scientist who applies quantitative methods to complex challenges like polarization, misinformation, and democracy. A former professor of data science and political science at NYU and NYU Shanghai, they now focus on public-facing work, including hosting the podcasts Behind the Data and Political Reality.

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