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As a kid I've always loved information that I could get from data and the stories that could be told with numbers

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I remember growing up I'll be frustrated on how my own parents would lie to me using numbers you know.

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They lie to you about " I've told you once I've told you a thousand times"..no daddy, you've only told me 17 times and twice it wasn't my fault

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I think that's one of the reasons I got a PhD in statistics you know, I always wanted to know what are people trying to hide with numbers

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you know, as a statistician I want people to show me the data so I can decide for myself.

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Donald and I were pregnant with our third child and we were at about 41 and a half weeks, what some of you may refer to as been overdue

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Statisticians we call that being within the 95% confidence interval,

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and at this point in the process we had to come in every couple of days to do a stress test, on the baby, and this is just routine

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a test whether the baby is feeling any type of undo stress,

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and you are rarely if ever seen by your actual Doctor just whoever happens to be working at the hospital that day.

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So we are going for a stress test and after 20 minutes the Doctor comes out

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and he says "your baby is on distress, we need to induce you"

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now.. as a statistician what's my response? Show me the data!

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so, then he proceeds to tell us the baby's heart rate trace went from 18 minutes, the baby's heart rate was on the normal zone

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and for 2 minutes it was it what appeared to be my heart rate zone and I said

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"well, is it possible that maybe this was my heart rate? I was moving around a little bit

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is hard to lay still on your back, 41 weeks pregnant for 20 minutes you know,

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maybe it was shifting around.

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He said "well.. we don't want to take any chances"

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I said Ok, what if I was at 36 weeks with the same data, would you decision be to induce?

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Well, no, no I would wait until you were at lelast 38 weeks but you are almost 42

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there is no reason to leave that baby inside let's get you a room.

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I said Ok, I said well.. you know..

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why don't we just do it again, we can collect more data!

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I can try to be really still for 20 minutes we can sort of average the two and see, you know, what that means

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and.. he goes, "well, Ma'm I just don't want you to hava a miscarriage"

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That' makes 3 of us! And then he says you know your chances of having a miscarriage double

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when you go past your due date, let's get you a room

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Wow!.. so now as a statistician, what's my response?

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Show me the data! dude you're talking chances, I do chances all day long, tell me all about chances, let's talk chances

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let's talk chances!

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So I said, ok, so do I go from like a 30% chance to a 60% chance, where are we here

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with this miscarriage?.. and he goes.." uhm, not quite but it doubles and

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we really just want what's best for the baby."

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Undaunted, I tried to commingle. I said ok out of 1000 full term pregnant woman

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How many of them are going to miscarry just before their due date?

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And then he looks at me, and looks at Donald then he goes, "about 1 in a thousand".

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I said Ok, Ok, and so of those 1000 women how many are going to miscarry

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just after their due date? "about 2."

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I said ok, so you are telling me that my chances go from 0.1% chance

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to a 0.2% chance

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Ok, so at this ppoint the data is not convincing us that we need to be induced

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and so then we proceed to have a conversation about how inductions leads to a higher rate

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of cesarean sections and if at all possible we'd like to avoid that

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and then I said you know and I really don'think my due date is accurate

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And so this really stunned him and he looks sort of puzzled

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and I said, well you may not know this but pregnancy due dates are calculated

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assuming that you have a standard 28 cycle

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and my cycle ranges sometimes is 27 sometimes is up to 38

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and I have been collecting the data to prove it.

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And so... we endeded up leaving the hospital that day without being induced

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we actually had to sign a waiver to walk out of the hospital

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and I'm not advocating that you not listen to your Doctors, because even with our first child

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we wre induced at 38 weeks, cervical fluid was low, I'm not anti-medical intervention

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but why we were confident to leave that day? We had data that told a different story.

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We have been collecting data for 6 years.

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I had this temperature data, and it told a different story in fact,

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we could proabably pretty accurately estimate conception, yeah..

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conception, yeah.. That's a story you want to tell at your kids wedding reception..

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"I remember like it was yesterday, my temperature was a sizzling 97.8 degrees..

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as I stared into your father's eyes.. Oh yeah, oh yeah, 22 more years we're telling that story.

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But we were confident to leave because we've been collecting data.

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Now what does that data look like? Here's a standard chart

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of a woman's waking body temperature during the course of a cycle.

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So from the beginning of the menstrual cycle until the beginning of the next.

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You'll see that the temperature is not random,

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right there clearly there is a low pattern at the beginning of her cycle

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and then you see this jump and then a higher set of temperatures at the end of her cycle.

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So what's happening here? What is that data telling you? Well ladies, at the beginning of our cycle, the hormone estrogen is dominant

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and that estrogen causes a suppression of your body temperature

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and on ovulation, your body releases an egg and progesterone takes over, pro-gestation

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and so your body heats up in anticipation of housing this new little fertilized egg.

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So why this temperature jump? Think about when a bird sits on her eggs. Why is she sitting on them?

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She wants to keep them warm, protect them and keeping them warm..

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Ladies this is exactly what our bodies do every month, they heat up in anticipation

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of keeping a new little life form, and if you are not pregnant

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then estrogen takes back over and that cycle starts all over again,

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but if you do get pregnant, sometime you actually see another shift in your temperatures

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and it stays elevated for those whole 9 months

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that's why you see those pregnagnt woman sweating and hot

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because their temperatures are high!

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here is a chart that we had about 3 or 4 years ago

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we were really excited about this chart, you'll se the low temperature level

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and then a shift and for about 5 days, that about the time it takes for the egg to travel

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down the fallopian tube and implant

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and then you see those temperature charts go up a little bit

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and in fact, we had a second temperature shift

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confirmed with a pregnancy test that were indeed pregnant

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with our fist child, very exciting. Until a couple of days later

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I saw some sporting and then I noticed heavy blood flow.

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and we had in fact had an early stage miscarriage

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and what appeared had I not been taking my temperature

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I really just thought my period was late that month

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but we actually had data to show that we had miscarried this baby

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and even though this data revealed a really unfortunate event in our lives

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it was information that we can then take to our doctor

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so if there was a fertility issue or some problem I had data to show,

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look, we got pregnant our temperature shifted, we somehow lost this baby

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what is tit that we can do to help prevent this problem?

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And is not just about temperatures, and is not just about fertility

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we can use data about our bodies to tell us a lot of things

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for instance did you know that taking your temperature can tell you a lot about the condition of your thyroid?

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so your thyroid works a lot like the thermostat in your house.

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There is an optimal temperature that you want in your house

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you set your thermostat. When it gets too cold in the house your thermostat kicks in

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and says hey we need to blow some heat around, or if it gets too hot

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your thermostat sort of registers turn the AC on, cool us off

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that's exactly how your thyroid works in your body

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your thyroid tries to keep an optimal temperature for your body

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if it get too cold your thyroid says we need to heat up, if it gets too hot

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your thyroid cools you down.

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But what happens when your thyroid is not functioning well ?

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but when it doesn't functioning then it shows up in your body temperatures

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they tend to be lower than normal and very erratic.

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and so by collecting this data you can find out information about your thyroid.

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Now, what is it, if you had a thyroid problem and you went to the doctor,

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your doctor would actually test the amount of thyroid stimulating hormone in your blood.

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Fine, but the problem with that test it doesn't tell you how active the hormone is in your body

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so you may have a lot of hormone present but it might not be actively working

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to regulate your body temperature. Just by collecting your temperature every day

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you get information about the condition of your thyroid.

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So what if you don't want to take your temperature every day? I advocate that you do

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but there's tons of other things you can take

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you can take your blood pressure, you can take your weight.. yeah, who's excited about

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taking your weight every day..

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Early on in our marriage Donald had a stuffy nose,

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and he had been taking a slu of medications to try to relieve his stuffy nose

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to no avail. And so that night he comes and he wakes me up and he says

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"honey, I can't breath out of my nose"

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and I sort of roll over and I looked and I said, well, can you breath out of your mouth?

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And he goes Ah, Ah, yes! but I cant breath out of my nose!

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And so like any good wife, I rushed him to the emergency room

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at 2 o'clock in the morning

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and the whole time I'm driving and I'm thinking

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you can't die on my now! we just got married

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people would think I killed you!

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and so, we get to the ER and the nurse sees us

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and he can't breath out of his nose and so she brings us to the back

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and the doctor says what seems to be the problem and he goes " I can't breath out of my nose"

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and he said, you can't breath out of your nose?" No".

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but he can breath out of his mouth..

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OK, he takes a step back and looks at both of us

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and he says sir, I think I know the problem

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you're having a heart attack, I'm going to order an EKG and a CAT scan for you immediately

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And we are thinking, no no no, it's not a heart attack he can breath

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just out of his mouth.. no no no

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and so we go back and forth with this doctor because we think it is the incorrect diagnosis

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and he's like no really, it'll be fine, just calm down

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and I'm thinking: how do you calm down? I don't think he's having a heart attack..

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Fortunately for us, this doctor was at the end of the shift

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this new doctor comes in he sees us clearly distrut with a husband who can't breath

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out of his nose

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He starts asking us questions, he says well, do you two exercise?

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We ride our bikes, we go to the gym.. occasionally.

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we move around, uhm.. he says: what were you doing just before you came here?

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I'm thinking I was sleeping, honestly, but Ok, what was Donald doing just before he was taken

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so Donald goes into the slu of medications he was taking and he lists

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"I took this decongestant, and then I took this nasal spray"...

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and then all of a sudden the light bulb goes off

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and he says, "Oh, you should never mix this decongestant with this nasal spray

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clogs you up every time. Here, take this one instead", gives us a prescription

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We're looking at each other and I looked at the doctor

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and I said why is it that it seems you were able to accurately diagnose

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his condition but this previous doctor wanted to order an EKG and a CAT scan?

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And he looks at us and says" when a 350 pound man walks in the ER

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and says he can't breath, you assume he's having a heart attack

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and you ask questions later"

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ER doctors are trained to make decisions quickly, but

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not always accurately. And so had we had

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some information about our heart health to share with him

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maybe we would have gotten a better diagnosis the first time

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I want you to consider the following chart, of systolic blood pressure measurements

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from October 2010 to July 2012. You'll see that these measurements start

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in the prehypertension/Hypertension zone, but over about the course of a year and a half

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they move into the normal zone. This is about the hear rate of a healthy 16 year old.

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What story is this data telling you?

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Obviously is the data from someone who's made a drastic transformation

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and fortunately for us, that person happens to be here today

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So that 350 pound guy that walked into the ER with me, is now an even sexier and healthier

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225 pound guy, and that's his blood pressure trace.

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Over the course of that year and a half, Donald is eating changed

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and his exercise regimen changed and his heart rate responded,

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his blood pressure responded to that change that he made in his body.

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What's the take home message that I want you to leave with today?

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By taking ownership of your data, just like we've done

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just by taking this daily measurements about yourself,

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you become the expert of your body, you become the authority.

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It's not hard to do. You don't have to have a PhD in statistics,

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to be an expert in yourself, you don't have to have a medical degree to be your body's expert.

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Medical doctors, they're experts on the population, but you are the expert on yourself.

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And so when the two of you come together, when two experts come togehter

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the two of you are able to make a better decision, than just your doctor alone.

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Now that you understand the power of information that you can get

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through personal data collection, I'd like you all to stand

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and raise your right hand.

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Yes, get it up

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I challenge you, to take ownership of your data,

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and today I hereby confer upon you, a TedX associate's degree and elementary statistics

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with a concentration in time dependent data analysis

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with all the rights and privileges adverteining there to

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and the next time you are in your doctor's office,

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as newly inducted statisticians, what should always be your response?

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Show me the data! I can't hear you.. Show me the data! one more time..

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Show me the data! Show me the data.. Thank you