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Showing posts from August, 2020

COVID-19 Update by London Borough

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x-axis: latest 7 day average for new daily lab-confirmed cases per 10000 person y-axis: the 30 day increase of the new cases, measured by log ratio The closer to the bottom left the better the borough is doing. I then created a distance metric between the borough and Greenwich as a measure of severity: Severity = Average(Percentile Rank along x-axis,  Percentile Rank along y-axis) which I then set up as a dependent variable. Some suggests there maybe clusters related to Eid festival. However there is actually a negative and insignificant coefficient when I regress vs. ethnicity data. (1) Maybe wealth can be a proxy for oversea mobility and non-white-collar-job. If I use house price (link in the code) as a proxy to wealth, and result again is very weak. No relationship with population density of the borough either. Can you spot any pattern?  (1) https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/detailed-ethnicity-by-age---sex-ward-tools---2011-census-- Full code below: library(data.table) library(ggpl

The Infinite Dimension of Truth - According to Taoist Philosophy

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  "If the truth can be fully described by language, then this is not the truth"  (1) This is the first sentence of the most important Taoist text and in my opinion often overlooked. In this world, the truth has infinite dimension. And if we try to model the truth by language, we are bound to miss something. Analogously, describing the truth is similar to projecting onto a multi-dimensional plane, e.g. Truth = ∑ß¡x¡ + ε where x¡ can be different words or topics. You will always get an error term ε. And hence: "If you observe without any perspective, then you can see the fullness; if you come with a perspective, then you only see what you come to see"  (2) ... which feels particularly true in today's society.  Search engine and social media platform are even strengthening our innate human behaviour. They deliver news feed and search results that you like to click!  What does that mean to a data scientist and even more generally as a person then? Active open-minded

Is second wave coming to London?

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  The some columns on the data file has changed so I have updated the code from my last post. It is worrying that the daily number of new cases has risen to the same level as when the lock down started. The speed of the increase remains quite slow however. This can be because but not limited to: The level of immunity in London is higher People are more careful (but, as I observe, more and more relaxed as days go by) Restricted mobility and work from home Better ventilation as the weather has been very warm and people here have no air conditioning. It is therefore quite tempting to conclude the critical threshold for the second wave is going to be higher than roughly 150 people per day when the last lock-down started. I am going to venture a guess - 200-300 people per day potentially? If the trend continues, mindful that the latest dip is due to lag, then the level can be breached in 2-4 weeks time? #data.table #R #covid19 #secondwave Full code below: library(data.table) library(ggplot2