The Washington Post has some simple visual simulations that show how strategies such as quarantining and social distancing can impact the spread of an infectious disease.
COVID-19 dashboard
Effective COVID-19 dashboard showing UK cases—from Public Health England.
COVID-19 epidemiology with R
Interesting, and timely, article on using R to analyse COVID-19 incidence data collated by John Hopkins University.
It makes use of two epidemiology packages.
earlyRfor estimation of infectiousness, as measured by the reproduction number (R), in the early stages of an outbreak.EpiEstimfor estimating the time varying instantaneous reproduction number during epidemics
These packages, and many more, are part of the R Epidemics Consortium (RECON). They
[…] gather experts in data science, modelling methodology, public health, and software development to create the next generation of analytics tools for informing the response to disease outbreaks, health emergencies and humanitarian crises, using the R software and other free, open-source resources.
List of best visualisations of 2018 lists
No, the title isn’t a typo. There’s a list of the "best of 2018 visualisation lists". List of lists is now a thing…apparently.
I did think about picking the best of the best of 2018 visualisation lists—but I couldn’t do it to you.
But, it’s a great resource so worth reading.
One in 292 million
People can’t get their heads round very large (or small) numbers. This results in us being unable to reason about rare events or things that happen over long periods of time.
When I was a child, my parents wanted me to walk to school through woodland rather than along the busy road. Makes sense—roads are statistically quite dangerous. However, in today’s society, the advice to children is to remain in busy places lest they be abducted. This is an example of us over-reacting to things that offend us morally—and thus overestimating their frequency. Just one of a number of causes of risk misperception.
Evolution doesn’t make intuitive sense when considered in the context of a human lifetime—or even against many generations. It operates on the scale of many millions of years. That kind of time frame is hard to comprehend for a species that lives for around 80 years. Again, large numbers confound us.
A classic example of risk misperception is the chance of winning the lottery. We all know that it’s unlikely—but don’t have a sense of quite how unlikely.
The Wall Street Journal has an interactive visualization that gives us a visceral feel for our chances. I recommend you give it a go. Don’t cheat—at least not immediately.
But, hey—don’t let statistics spoil your fun. I have a good feeling about next week’s draw…