StatQuest CEO partners with UNC for presentation and contest

On Aug. 28, the UNC School of Data Science and Society hosted Joshua Starmer, YouTuber and founder of StatQuest, to give a presentation on utilizing social media to break down seemingly complicated ideas into digestible information.

Starmer spoke in the Student Union on Wednesday afternoon, with around 30 students attending his presentation.

Starmer's company, StatQuest, focuses on explaining complex data science concepts, primarily through YouTube. His channel on the platform currently has 1.23 million subscribers and over 68 million cumulative views. 

Starmer formerly worked as an assistant professor in the UNC Department of Genetics. He said he joined the lab as the only numbers person amid more experiment-focused scientists, but he quickly learned how much effort went into research itself.

“I realized that these people in the lab are some of the hardest working people I've ever met,” Starmer said. “They come in on the weekends. They work overnight sometimes. Some of these experiments take years.”

While at UNC, Starmer worked under Terry Magnuson, the Kay M. & Van L. Weatherspoon  Eminent Distinguished Professor of Genetics. Magnuson said that Starmer’s introduction to UNC transformed what the lab was doing.

“I think Josh was right there at the right time with the right way of explaining things,” Magnuson said. “It was fun in the lab meetings because when he would start his talk, he would give us the data points of how many followers he had. You know, he started out with 100 and went to 5,000, and every month it was growing exponentially to the point now it’s worldwide.”

In his presentation, Starmer said that his videos were originally intended to act as a reference for his labmates.

“The goal was never to get millions of views. The goal has always been to solve these specific problems,” he said.

During Wednesday's presentation, Starmer walked attendees through the process of making their own StatQuest video using free, accessible software – his very first time doing so in a presentation.

He said that the most important part of making a video is the quality of its explanation and storytelling. “If you get those things, nobody really cares that much about the production value,” he said.

Before the presentation, Starmer greeted attendees at the door with a ukulele and a smile.

He said Magnuson encouraged him to incorporate music into teaching. Today, his most popular StatQuest video, a step-by-step breakdown of principal component analysis, begins with a short song accompanied by ukulele.

UNC first-year Ezi Ilabor  said he enjoyed Starmer’s energetic presence, and that while his ukulele seemed funny at first, it helped Ilabor be more attentive to the presentation.

At the event, Starmer and the School of Data Science and Society announced the details of their Research Educational Entertainment Lab (R.E.E.L.) video contest.

The contest is open to all UNC undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Submissions are open until Oct. 14. Once they close, a $300 cash prize will be awarded to the first place video.

Starmer said anyone who participates will receive prizes from the contest's sponsors, including Lightning AI, NVIDIA and Posit PBC.

“I've always loved TV shows that explain science and things like that, and usually when you talk to scientists, it's not like the TV shows because you can't understand half the words they're saying,” Starmer said. “So I'm really excited about challenging people to talk about what they do in a way that I can understand.”

@dailytarheel | university@dailytarheel.com

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article wrongly listed a company as a sponsor to the competition. The correct sponsors are as listed: Lightning AI, NVIDIA and Postit PBC.