APPLIED PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS SEMINAR

Fall 2006 / Spring 2007
Upcoming Talks / Past talks


Time:Wed Feb 28, 1.30pm-2.30pm

Place: PHYS 129

Speaker: Mik Bickis

Title: Can One Predict a Pandemic? An application of imprecise probability.

Abstract: Influenza pandemics have swept the world numerous times during the last few centuries. Cases of bird flu infecting humans have prompted predictions that we are due for another pandemic soon, but skeptics dismiss such prognostications as panic caused by a misunderstanding of probability. The issue can be reduced mathematically to the question of whether the pandemic process has an increasing, constant, or decreasing hazard function. One can construct simplistic models of viral evolution that give rise to any of these possibilities.

This talk will use historical data to examine the hypothesis of increasing hazard rate, using the concept of imprecise probability. After an introduction to imprecise probability, bounds on the predictive distribution of the time to the next pandemic will be presented.