News & Events

Subscribe to email list

Please select the email list(s) to which you wish to subscribe.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA

Enter the characters shown in the image.

User menu

You are here

COVID-19 Modelling and Forecasting in the US and Canada: A statistician’s pro(retro)spective

Tuesday, October 12, 2021 - 11:00 to 12:00
Daniel J. McDonald, UBC Statistics Associate Professor
Statistics Seminar
Zoom / ESB 4192

To join via Zoom: To join this seminar via Zoom, please request connection details from headsec [at] stat.ubc.ca

To Join in-person: To join this seminar in-person, online registration is required here (limited seating)

Title: COVID-19 Modelling and Forecasting in the US and Canada: A statistician’s pro(retro)spective

Abstract: Since the COVID pandemic came to North America in March 2020, researchers and research groups have pivoted or sprung up to aid and nudge policy decision making. For the last year-plus, I’ve worked regularly with two of these – the BC COVID Modelling Group and Carnegie Mellon University’s Delphi Research Group – groups that share a number of similarities but which could not be more different. In this talk, I’ll give an overview of the structure, goals, and accomplishments of these groups and highlight many of the difficulties faced, especially when it comes to data. I’ll also describe the statistical tools used for forecasting and modeling, efforts made to evaluate models and develop better forecasters, and some major lessons learned. I’ll conclude by describing some of the many open projects that need statistical input going forward.