4 ms·

> There is no "actual data" in your comment above There is in http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w which I said matche

> There is no "actual data" in your comment above There is in http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w which I said matches what I've found rather well. > The other poster doesn't have any responsibility to tell you "how to model the data better". Yes he does,

NateEag 7y ago
> There is in http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w which I said matches what I've found rather well There may be data there, but if I understand you correctly you did not have it when you made your first post. It is therefore inadmissible evidence as to whether your first post was a reasonable thing to write. > Yes he does, If you have decided you want to be an epidemiologist, or at least to learn their skillset, whose responsibility is it to fulfill that desire? I don't think there is a reasonable answer to that other than "mine."
- throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
  > but if I understand you correctly you did not have it when you made your first post correct > It is therefore inadmissible evidence as to whether your first post was a reasonable thing to write. Completely wrong. I approximated the lowest part of a logistic function with e^x, which is reasonable for small values. Given it matched well with professional epidemiologists' graphs, it suggests I'm getting it approximately right. > whose responsibility is it to fulfill that desire? Mine and yours. Don't stick 'reasonable' on your replies and suppose it insures you in any way cos it doesn't.
  - andrepd 7y ago
    Mate I can start to pontificate randomly about aeronautics design, and you can very well tell me to shut up with no requirement that you are an expert yourself.
  - alien_ 7y ago
    There's a quote that states that all models are wrong, some happen to be useful. With this in mind I think we should stop nitpicking on non-specialists who try to raise awareness of this pandemic. Yes there might be some differences from what a specialist would have done. Due to the speed at which the situation evolves and the inability to test everyone daily there are lots of unknowns so even a specialist may not be able to give a more much precise figure, everything is going to be a rough estimate. This is a very serious situation and it's better to err on the caution side, people's lives depend on everyone doing their part. Non-constructive criticism of people who raise awareness will erode people's buy-in and people will die because of this.
andrepd 7y ago
I don't need to be an aeronautic engineer to know that a person with no such background should not throw hunches about designing planes.
leereeves 7y ago
People spend years studying epidemiology. No one can write a comment here that will teach you how to do it properly. But I'll try to help. You're looking at a graph of confirmed cases, in other words, positive test results. That may be due to an increase in the number of infected people; or because the number of tests being performed is increasing, and therefore the percentage of infected people reported as confirmed cases is increasing; or because some positive test results (even with confirmation) are false positives. And there may be other causes that I don't know, because I'm not an epidemiologist either, just a statistics grad student. Figuring out the the contribution of each cause is a job for the professionals.

NateEag 7y ago

> There is in http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w which I said matches what I've found rather well There may be data there, but if I understand you correctly you did not have it when you made your first post. It is therefore inadmissible evidence as to whether your first post was a reasonable thing to write. > Yes he does, If you have decided you want to be an epidemiologist, or at least to learn their skillset, whose responsibility is it to fulfill that desire? I don't think there is a reasonable answer to that other than "mine."

throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
> but if I understand you correctly you did not have it when you made your first post correct > It is therefore inadmissible evidence as to whether your first post was a reasonable thing to write. Completely wrong. I approximated the lowest part of a logistic function with e^x, which is reasonable for small values. Given it matched well with professional epidemiologists' graphs, it suggests I'm getting it approximately right. > whose responsibility is it to fulfill that desire? Mine and yours. Don't stick 'reasonable' on your replies and suppose it insures you in any way cos it doesn't.
- andrepd 7y ago
  Mate I can start to pontificate randomly about aeronautics design, and you can very well tell me to shut up with no requirement that you are an expert yourself.
- alien_ 7y ago
  There's a quote that states that all models are wrong, some happen to be useful. With this in mind I think we should stop nitpicking on non-specialists who try to raise awareness of this pandemic. Yes there might be some differences from what a specialist would have done. Due to the speed at which the situation evolves and the inability to test everyone daily there are lots of unknowns so even a specialist may not be able to give a more much precise figure, everything is going to be a rough estimate. This is a very serious situation and it's better to err on the caution side, people's lives depend on everyone doing their part. Non-constructive criticism of people who raise awareness will erode people's buy-in and people will die because of this.

andrepd 7y ago

I don't need to be an aeronautic engineer to know that a person with no such background should not throw hunches about designing planes.

leereeves 7y ago

People spend years studying epidemiology. No one can write a comment here that will teach you how to do it properly. But I'll try to help. You're looking at a graph of confirmed cases, in other words, positive test results. That may be due to an increase in the number of infected people; or because the number of tests being performed is increasing, and therefore the percentage of infected people reported as confirmed cases is increasing; or because some positive test results (even with confirmation) are false positives. And there may be other causes that I don't know, because I'm not an epidemiologist either, just a statistics grad student. Figuring out the the contribution of each cause is a job for the professionals.