7 ms·
Why Don’t Patients Get Sick in Sync? Modelers Find Statistical Clues
- tingletech 9y agoFWIW, "Sync" is not a place -- by "in Sync" they mean "synchronously". This confused me for several minutes.
- always_good 9y agoAlso, "modelers" isn't referring to model plain enthusiasts.
- sp332 9y agoIt's short for "in synchrony". It's really not an uncommon abbreviation.
- kahnpro 9y agoUsually they don't capitalize the S
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y agoTitle capitalization, e.g. http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/capitalization/rules-for-capitalization-in-titles.html http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/capitalization/rules-for-c...
- jakelarkin 9y agosaved you a click: time distribution follows a log-normal distribution (fat tail to the right) statistically modeling pathogen progression over tissue spatially (2d, 3d) seems to confirm the real world distribution
- gwern 9y agoThe log-normal is an underappreciated distribution. It's almost as common as the normal distribution, and it shows up a lot in human-relevant stuff. For example, on the main page now is a bit about 'luck' where the model/simulation is clearly generating log-normal distributions and all the power-law stuff is a distraction; many things form a natural 'pipeline' where the normal variables multiply rather than sum, and so you get a log-normal. A famous example is Shockley's analysis of scientific productivity: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/1957-shockley.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/1957-shockley.pdf If you are somewhat above-average in getting new ideas, in researching them, and in publishing them, say, you will wind up producing a lot more than someone who is just a little below-average across the board. Throw in a general factor like intelligence or just some inter-correlations, and the skew will be even more extreme. For infections, multiplicativity makes a lot of sense. After all, what is an infection but a virus or bacteria literally being fruitful & multiplying? Small differences in immune system or the virus affecting its speed of reproduction or net total in each 'stage', and then a log-normal wouldn't be too surprising.
- darkerside 9y agoIt's funny because towards the end of the article: > As Scott and his colleagues noted in their paper, if a pathogen grows exponentially and a population receives a statistically normal distribution of exposures to it, then a lognormal distribution of incubation times should result This makes it seem trivially obvious that you would expect a log normal distribution. I'm conflicted because I'm glad I read an interesting article, but why was it presented as if there were any surprise or mystery to it?
- xapata 9y agoThings that are obvious to one person aren't to another.
- darkerside 9y agoRight, and it wasn't something that I knew before reading the article. I appreciate that. What I don't is that there's a fairly simple and likely reason those charts look the way they do. The article makes it seem like a miraculous and unexplained coincidence.
- th0ma5 9y agoWhy can't I get two colds at the same time?
- burkaman 9y agoYou can, but you probably wouldn't notice. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19633719 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19633719 "Two samples were co-infected with HRV-A and HRV-B or HRV-C. [...] Double or triple infections with HRV-C and respiratory syncytial virus and/or bocavirus were diagnosed in 33.3% of the HRV-infected patients, but no correlation with severity of clinical outcome was observed."