4 ms·

I found this site very helpful: https://rt.live/ https://rt.live/

jdminhbg 6y ago
I was strongly convinced by criticisms of that model leveled here: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/our-best-people-are-working-on-this-problem.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/ou...
- mzs 6y ago
  That is not an impartial source: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/re-starting-the-economy.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/re... Also the claims of "Rif A. Saurous" are dubious, the first of many: "… it’s deeply implausible on its face that WA had R=.24 on 10 April and R=1.4 on 17 April." That's the week Easter happened and the mobility data from Apple in fact does show people in Seattle traveling more that week: https://imgur.com/a/bCK7O86 https://imgur.com/a/bCK7O86 Another recent gem: When Will The Riots Begin? - Marginal REVOLUTIONmarginalrevolution.com › marginalrevolution › 2020/04 › when-will-th... 4 days ago - The economy was doing well, Trump had charisma but was erratic and ... Meanwhile the elites are laughing about binging Tiger King on Netflix.
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    I'm sorry, but MR is a mainstream, reliable source. The author has a column in Bloomberg, previously in the NYT, and is widely cited. The rt.live model is very bad, and you should take those criticisms seriously.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    What is an impartial source to you - someone who has no other opinions on related topics?
    - mzs 6y ago
      One is just data, plots, functions, methods, links to a peer reviewed paper, and cautions where dragons may lie in its results. It makes no policy suggestions. The other is an email from a person not disclosing a real name making dubious claims of which even the first is not fact checked. Further the site makes policy suggestions routinely. One of those is much more likely to be arguing in bad faith.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I don't think it makes sense to have a heuristic of summarily rejecting any analysis from people who make policy suggestions.
        mzs 6y ago
        I don't either, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the arguments made in one fell to immediate scrutiny, wanting to affect policy likely shows why though. In stats there's a smell test, arguments made without numbers.
mzs 6y ago
also links to this plus some informative blog posts
Animats 6y ago
They're over-fitting noisy data. Huge changes in R over the course of a week, as for Idaho, has to be an illusion. One problem is that some states and some hospitals don't report daily data on weekends, and new cases and deaths are charged to Monday. Low-pass filtering helps smooth the curves, but adds lag, of course. Centered low-pass filtering is useful but can only be applied retrospectively. There's no magic bullet for dealing with noisy data.
- acqq 6y ago
  The cases not being "perfectly spread" over the seven week days is observable also outside of the U.S. It's simply an artifact how most of the workers work. So the would-be-modelers should really be able to handle at least that! Another very common pattern is that the cases / deaths / was test performed / whatever data which is to be reported gets "stuck" and then released in a bunch at some moment of time, sometimes only once in some week. It's really surprising to me that such simple truths aren't recognized.
- mzs 6y ago
  It does do smoothing, plus the ranges are very plausible for this Bayesian approach: $ head -1 rt.csv state,date,ML,Low_90,High_90,Low_50,High_50 $ awk -F, '$1 == "ID" { printf("%s: %.2f - %.2f\n", $2, $6, $7) }' rt.csv | tail -7 2020-04-13: 0.07 - 0.54 2020-04-14: 0.10 - 0.59 2020-04-15: 0.32 - 0.92 2020-04-16: 0.50 - 1.16 2020-04-17: 0.51 - 1.17 2020-04-18: 0.47 - 1.11 2020-04-19: 0.32 - 0.94
lanewinfield 6y ago
FYI, this github link and rt.live are both by Kevin Systrom.
- toomim 6y ago
  And rt.live was made in collaboration with Mike Krieger. For those who don't know, these are the two founders of Instagram.

I was strongly convinced by criticisms of that model leveled here: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/our-best-people-are-working-on-this-problem.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/ou...

mzs 6y ago
That is not an impartial source: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/re-starting-the-economy.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/re... Also the claims of "Rif A. Saurous" are dubious, the first of many: "… it’s deeply implausible on its face that WA had R=.24 on 10 April and R=1.4 on 17 April." That's the week Easter happened and the mobility data from Apple in fact does show people in Seattle traveling more that week: https://imgur.com/a/bCK7O86 https://imgur.com/a/bCK7O86 Another recent gem: When Will The Riots Begin? - Marginal REVOLUTIONmarginalrevolution.com › marginalrevolution › 2020/04 › when-will-th... 4 days ago - The economy was doing well, Trump had charisma but was erratic and ... Meanwhile the elites are laughing about binging Tiger King on Netflix.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  I'm sorry, but MR is a mainstream, reliable source. The author has a column in Bloomberg, previously in the NYT, and is widely cited. The rt.live model is very bad, and you should take those criticisms seriously.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  What is an impartial source to you - someone who has no other opinions on related topics?
  - mzs 6y ago
    One is just data, plots, functions, methods, links to a peer reviewed paper, and cautions where dragons may lie in its results. It makes no policy suggestions. The other is an email from a person not disclosing a real name making dubious claims of which even the first is not fact checked. Further the site makes policy suggestions routinely. One of those is much more likely to be arguing in bad faith.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I don't think it makes sense to have a heuristic of summarily rejecting any analysis from people who make policy suggestions.
      - mzs 6y ago
        I don't either, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the arguments made in one fell to immediate scrutiny, wanting to affect policy likely shows why though. In stats there's a smell test, arguments made without numbers.

mzs 6y ago

also links to this plus some informative blog posts

Animats 6y ago

They're over-fitting noisy data. Huge changes in R over the course of a week, as for Idaho, has to be an illusion. One problem is that some states and some hospitals don't report daily data on weekends, and new cases and deaths are charged to Monday. Low-pass filtering helps smooth the curves, but adds lag, of course. Centered low-pass filtering is useful but can only be applied retrospectively. There's no magic bullet for dealing with noisy data.

acqq 6y ago
The cases not being "perfectly spread" over the seven week days is observable also outside of the U.S. It's simply an artifact how most of the workers work. So the would-be-modelers should really be able to handle at least that! Another very common pattern is that the cases / deaths / was test performed / whatever data which is to be reported gets "stuck" and then released in a bunch at some moment of time, sometimes only once in some week. It's really surprising to me that such simple truths aren't recognized.
mzs 6y ago
It does do smoothing, plus the ranges are very plausible for this Bayesian approach: $ head -1 rt.csv state,date,ML,Low_90,High_90,Low_50,High_50 $ awk -F, '$1 == "ID" { printf("%s: %.2f - %.2f\n", $2, $6, $7) }' rt.csv | tail -7 2020-04-13: 0.07 - 0.54 2020-04-14: 0.10 - 0.59 2020-04-15: 0.32 - 0.92 2020-04-16: 0.50 - 1.16 2020-04-17: 0.51 - 1.17 2020-04-18: 0.47 - 1.11 2020-04-19: 0.32 - 0.94

lanewinfield 6y ago

FYI, this github link and rt.live are both by Kevin Systrom.

toomim 6y ago
And rt.live was made in collaboration with Mike Krieger. For those who don't know, these are the two founders of Instagram.