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Category: Science Snippets

  • Pandemics are a Systems Management Problem

    George Rebane [After working on my epidemic spread and testing models, I cobbled together this structured draft on 7 May 2020, and have put off posting it due to other more compelling analytical problems having to do with the pandemic.  Now that I’m seeing other systems professionals coming to the same conclusion – e.g. ‘How…

  • Scattershots – 17may20 (updated 19may20)

    George Rebane Two-faced reporting.  How many times have we seen the same liberal reporter be comfortable with two distinct narratives depending on whether they are on FN or NPR, CNN, or any other lamestream outlet.  Unfortunately, NPR’s politics correspondent and a woman of gravitas, Mara Liasson is such a two-faced journalist.  As an FN panelist…

  • Unsettling ‘Settled Science’

    [This commentary was also published here in the 3jun20 edition of The Union.] George Rebane None are so certain about science as those outside looking in. Today, the SARS-CoV-2 (or Covid-19 or simply C19) pandemic ‘science’ in the public square rapidly became a mish-mash of unreliable reports, contending medical views, and ideologically tailored fake news. …

  • The Real Value of Unreliable Tests and Testing

    George Rebane Every social issue draws relevance ONLY through its numbers, which if you don’t understand, then you cannot participate in a reasoned discussion about the issue. Today we are concerned with two types of C19 tests and testing policies.  Tests fall into the ‘detect presence of infection’ variety, and the ‘detect presence of immunity’…

  • Testing to determine population fractions – extended (updated 23apr20)

    George Rebane In ‘Testing to determine population fractions’ I introduced the reliability aspect of tests for both infection and immunity.  This is still not a serious consideration brought up in the daily WH C19 briefings, and, of course, nothing of this level of complexity is covered in the media for various reasons ranging from the acumen…

  • The Second Wave of Covid-19 (updated 15apr20)

    George Rebane [A rewrite of this piece for broader audiences – ‘The big decision and the second wave’ – appeared in the 18apr20 online and print editions of The Union.] As we start to turn the corner on the initial wave of C19 infections sweeping the land, people are already talking about the second wave…

  • Testing to determine population fractions

    George Rebane In ‘Testing’s Tower of Babel’ I promised to inform readers of the reliability of testing in order to determine the fraction of a target population that has a defined attribute.  Today the whole country is supposed to be interested in the extent of the C19 infection, and also the extent of the recovery…

  • Testing’s Tower of Babel

    George Rebane In these pages it is always a bittersweet experience to encounter the extended comments of one of our progressive readers who so absolutely confirms their signature attributes, recorded here over the years, and at the same time illustrates their gross misunderstanding of the issue at hand.  Testing for the presence of the C19…

  • Face Masks – A considered view

    [Dr Hullett is a longtime friend, colleague, and RR reader.  As systems engineers and developers, we have traveled much of the long road together.  He has given permission to publish this personal correspondence.] Wayne Hullett, PhD The coronavirus particles are too small to be seen. A doctor on Youtube suggested thinking about coronavirus particles as…

  • Risk Analysis with Subjective EMAB Distributions

    George Rebane A few years back I introduced to our more technically oriented readers a new approach to capture and work with subjective random variables.  In ‘Predicting with Expressed Beliefs – a formal approach’ the Mode Augmented Boxcar (MAB) probability distribution was made available in a report which described its derivation and various useful applications.…

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