Statistics Seminar

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Date/Time:Monday, 16 Sep 2013 from 4:10 pm to 5:00 pm
Location:Snedecor 3105
Cost:Free
URL:www.stat.iastate.edu
Contact:Jeanette La Grange
Phone:515-294-3440
Channel:College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Categories:Lectures
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"Particle learning for low counts in disease outbreaks", Jarad Niemi, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University

We consider a measles outbreak in Harare, Zimbabwe from 2009-2010 where a total of 156 individual cases were confirmed in the weekly recorded surveillance system over the course of a year. We model the data with an epidemiological compartment model with observations only on the transitions to infectious, i.e. showing symptoms and contagious. We present methodology called particle learning for sequentially estimating both the state of the system, i.e. current number of infectious individuals, and the static parameters, i.e. rate of infectivity. Particle learning is a sequential Monte Carlo method, a.k.a. particle filter, that utilizes the sufficient statistic structure contained in the model to combat particle degeneracy. We conclude with an application of this methodology to the measles outbreak in Harare.