I am writing this post to address the gigantic elephant in the room about which the entire world is wondering — When really is the COVID-19 crisis going to end? When will all of our lives, the world economy, healthcare, infrastructure, travel, tourism — when are all these things going to go back to normal? Seeing that these questions are popping up from every corner of the world, one of my friends did and experiment to find out the answers.
We computer science majors have a problem — we try to answer every question in the world with machine learning. Why do we do so? It’s because machine learning does have the ability to answer every question in the world (although the answer to every question in the world is 42, but that’s a different discussion :P). So naturally, my friend, being a computer science major, starts putting his machine learning mind to work. He pulls out a popular model — the SIR model. The SIR model is a differential equation model for a set of dependant variables — Susceptible, Infected and Recovered, a model perfect for a pandemic outbreak such as the COVID-19 (you can Google it!). He pulls the daily cases reports coming in from different countries and trains his model to learn the pattern in which the COVID-19 has played out in these countries to date. Once trained, he applies this model on another set of countries and voila! This is the result:
He created a website on which he updates his predictions daily for the public to look at. Obviously, the website has more data than I’ve put up in the above image, because he wants you all to visit his website and give your suggestions and feedback :P. However, let me describe the image a bit for your benefit:
What does “Predicted Max Cases” mean?
It is a prediction of the total number of confirmed cases a region will see in the current COVID-19 lifecycle.
What does “Ends Completely” mean?
It is a prediction of the date when the region is likely to report the very last case.
What does the increase and decrease in the table mean?
The increment and decrement of the values in the cells is in comparison to the previous day’s predicted values.
For the nerds out there, if you’re really curious and interested about how he arrived at the final results, just click on any of the regions and something interesting will pop-up:
Yes, that’s what the machine learning algorithm has spit out for him. He just transformed the results into a readable tabular format for you all to perceive the predictions easily.
Predictions can be a sensitive issue, so my friend is really concerned about how people would react after looking at them. So, he thought it apt to put up a disclaimer for you all:
Disclaimer: Content from this website is STRICTLY ONLY for showing purpose and may contain errors. The model and data are inaccurate to the complex, evolving, and heterogeneous realities of different regions over time. Predictions are uncertain by nature. Users must take any predictions with caution. Over-optimism based on some predictions is dangerous because it may loosen our disciplines and controls and cause the turnaround of the virus and infection, and must be avoided. Earlier predictions are no longer valid because the real-world scenarios have changed rapidly.
Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to check out the website. And if you liked what you read, do share this answer with your close ones to let them know when they can expect to be free from the chains of COVID-19! :)
We computer science majors have a problem — we try to answer every question in the world with machine learning. Why do we do so? It’s because machine learning does have the ability to answer every question in the world (although the answer to every question in the world is 42, but that’s a different discussion :P). So naturally, my friend, being a computer science major, starts putting his machine learning mind to work. He pulls out a popular model — the SIR model. The SIR model is a differential equation model for a set of dependant variables — Susceptible, Infected and Recovered, a model perfect for a pandemic outbreak such as the COVID-19 (you can Google it!). He pulls the daily cases reports coming in from different countries and trains his model to learn the pattern in which the COVID-19 has played out in these countries to date. Once trained, he applies this model on another set of countries and voila! This is the result:
He created a website on which he updates his predictions daily for the public to look at. Obviously, the website has more data than I’ve put up in the above image, because he wants you all to visit his website and give your suggestions and feedback :P. However, let me describe the image a bit for your benefit:
What does “Predicted Max Cases” mean?
It is a prediction of the total number of confirmed cases a region will see in the current COVID-19 lifecycle.
What does “Ends Completely” mean?
It is a prediction of the date when the region is likely to report the very last case.
What does the increase and decrease in the table mean?
The increment and decrement of the values in the cells is in comparison to the previous day’s predicted values.
For the nerds out there, if you’re really curious and interested about how he arrived at the final results, just click on any of the regions and something interesting will pop-up:
Yes, that’s what the machine learning algorithm has spit out for him. He just transformed the results into a readable tabular format for you all to perceive the predictions easily.
Predictions can be a sensitive issue, so my friend is really concerned about how people would react after looking at them. So, he thought it apt to put up a disclaimer for you all:
Disclaimer: Content from this website is STRICTLY ONLY for showing purpose and may contain errors. The model and data are inaccurate to the complex, evolving, and heterogeneous realities of different regions over time. Predictions are uncertain by nature. Users must take any predictions with caution. Over-optimism based on some predictions is dangerous because it may loosen our disciplines and controls and cause the turnaround of the virus and infection, and must be avoided. Earlier predictions are no longer valid because the real-world scenarios have changed rapidly.
Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to check out the website. And if you liked what you read, do share this answer with your close ones to let them know when they can expect to be free from the chains of COVID-19! :)
Comments
Post a Comment