Variable Slope Forecasting Methods and COVID-19 Risk
Bibliographic record
Abstract
There are many real-world situations in which complex interacting forces are best described by a series of equations. Traditional regression approaches to these situations involve modeling and estimating each individual equation (producing estimates of “partial derivatives”) and then solving the entire system for reduced form relationships (“total derivatives”). We examine three estimation methods that produce “total derivative estimates” without having to model and estimate each separate equation. These methods produce a unique total derivative estimate for every observation, where the differences in these estimates are produced by omitted variables. A plot of these estimates over time shows how the estimated relationship has evolved over time due to omitted variables. A moving 95% confidence interval (constructed like a moving average) means that there is only a five percent chance that the next total derivative would lie outside that confidence interval if the recent variability of omitted variables does not increase. Simulations show that two of these methods produce much less error than ignoring the omitted variables problem does when the importance of omitted variables noticeably exceeds random error. In an example, the spread rate of COVID-19 is estimated for Brazil, Europe, South Africa, the UK, and the USA.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.034 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".