Sim Epidemic

Dotnaught writes "Scientific American has an intriguing story about EpiSims, an outbreak simulator. Designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), it deals with a social networking of a different sort: 'To understand what a social network really is and how it can be used for epidemiology, imagine the daily activities and contacts of a single hypothetical adult, Ann. She has short brushes with family members during breakfast and then with other commuters or carpoolers on her way to work. Depending on her job, she might meet dozens of people at work, with each encounter having a different duration, proximity and purpose.'"

Comments

Re:Phew

[waveclaw]

For a minute there, I thought this article was going to be about how millions of teenage girls are displaying frightening symptoms: siting inside all day instead of socializing, playing computer games all day, turning away from reality. I guess the Sims has the power to turn girls into guys. But that's not what this is about...

Since this is presented as a tool on which to base political policy, I am quite alarmed.

While you are making a joke, this actually brings into question several of the assumptions underlying this model. The social networks employed by this model are very simple compared with real life. Even though they are rigged to have similar power-law statistics, the model used may not be able to reach useful results. Critical details in the social networking of super carriers and patient zero are handled poorly, IMHO and that's only based on the article, basic college stats and high school level intro to sociology.

For instance, for any STD model will have to take into account the many over layed and distinct networks of sexual interactions. Sexually active high school students such as in your teenage girl joke have a very different social network pattern from adults. Another pattern is common among college students. Trying to use the model from the article would lead to incorrect results for their population and would deviate significantly from reality.