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Post by fretslider on May 7, 2020 6:11:15 GMT -5
Brutal Takedown of Neil Ferguson’s Model An experienced senior software engineer, Sue Denim, has written a devastating review of Dr. Neil Ferguson’s Imperial college epidemiological model that set the world on a our current lock down course of action. She appears quite qualified. My background. I wrote software for 30 years. I worked at Google between 2006 and 2014, where I was a senior software engineer working on Maps, Gmail and account security. I spent the last five years at a US/UK firm where I designed the company’s database product, amongst other jobs and projects.She explains how the code she reviewed isn’t actually Ferguson’s but instead a modified version from a team trying to clean it up in a face saving measure. The code. It isn’t the code Ferguson ran to produce his famous Report 9. What’s been released on GitHub is a heavily modified derivative of it, after having been upgraded for over a month by a team from Microsoft and others. This revised codebase is split into multiple files for legibility and written in C++, whereas the original program was “a single 15,000 line file that had been worked on for a decade” (this is considered extremely poor practice).She then discusses a fascinating aspect of this model. You never know what you’ll get! Non-deterministic outputs. Due to bugs, the code can produce very different results given identical inputs. They routinely act as if this is unimportant.
This problem makes the code unusable for scientific purposes, given that a key part of the scientific method is the ability to replicate results. Without replication, the findings might not be real at all – as the field of psychology has been finding out to its cost. Even if their original code was released, it’s apparent that the same numbers as in Report 9 might not come out of it.Ms. Denim elaborates on this “feature” quite a bit. It’s quite hilarious when you read the complete article. Imperial are trying to have their cake and eat it. Reports of random results are dismissed with responses like “that’s not a problem, just run it a lot of times and take the average”, but at the same time, they’re fixing such bugs when they find them. They know their code can’t withstand scrutiny, so they hid it until professionals had a chance to fix it, but the damage from over a decade of amateur hobby programming is so extensive that even Microsoft were unable to make it run right.Readers may be familiar with the averaging of outputs of climate model outputs in Climate Science, where it’s known as the ensemble mean. Or those cases where it’s assumed that errors all average out, as in certain temperature records. Denim goes on to describe a lack of regression testing, or any testing, undocumented equations, and the ongoing addition of new features in bug infested code. Denim’s final conclusions are devastating. Conclusions. All papers based on this code should be retracted immediately. Imperial’s modelling efforts should be reset with a new team that isn’t under Professor Ferguson, and which has a commitment to replicable results with published code from day one.
On a personal level, I’d go further and suggest that all academic epidemiology be defunded. This sort of work is best done by the insurance sector. Insurers employ modellers and data scientists, but also employ managers whose job is to decide whether a model is accurate enough for real world usage and professional software engineers to ensure model software is properly tested, understandable and so on. Academic efforts don’t have these people, and the results speak for themselves.wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/06/brutal-takedown-of-fergusons-model/lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/Richard Delingpole
@dickdelingpole
Do not leave your home unless you absolutely HAVE to...
shag a Soros-backed left-wing anti-capitalist climate activist.
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10:04 AM - May 6, 2020Ferguson cannot be blamed entirely for the massive economic and social damage being inflicted on the UK as a result of his discredited Imperial College study. Equally culpable, clearly, are the government ministers and advisors who decided to use it as justification www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/06/would-buy-a-used-computer-model-from-bonking-boffin-neil-ferguson/ Who ever wrote the article doesn't want their name known. Say Sue Denim quickly.... |
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Post by mouse on May 8, 2020 3:50:33 GMT -5
we didn't have lock down for Asian flu 1957.. I had that and some 30,000 died in the UK
the next one was Hong Kong flu in 1967 which nearly 80,000 people died in the UK...my Husband went down with that one
of course during an average winter some 300,000 to 400,000 can die.....we live on a cold wet island and in such conditions people die... it is what it is....
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Post by Dex on May 8, 2020 15:24:46 GMT -5
we didn't have lock down for Asian flu 1957.. I had that and some 30,000 died in the UK the next one was Hong Kong flu in 1967 which nearly 80,000 people died in the UK...my Husband went down with that one of course during an average winter some 300,000 to 400,000 can die.....we live on a cold wet island and in such conditions people die... it is what it is.... Do you mean that the best course would be to let people die in large numbers and thin out the population when things like this come along ? I don't think the population as a whole would agree with that. My mom says they were careful to stay out of crowds and to keep well as much as they could in the past. I'm glad they took the kids out of school. The difference is probably that there is a lot more up to the minute news over the computer so that we know what's going on. |
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Post by mouse on May 9, 2020 3:39:46 GMT -5
am not saying anything or making any point just bringing in a few facts that this has happened before during m life time Dex…….,but the entire world didn't close down...even though millions died.. although I realy don't think we have seen the last of this one ..which doesn't have one universal presentation and can leave none or various issues behind
the reality is that more peo0le survive than die and that is the good news.. aand some people don't even realise they have had it again that is the good news...… pity the media cannot be happier for the survivors... the Media here in the UK has been an utter disgrace.....dwelling constantly on the downsde
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Post by fretslider on May 10, 2020 6:58:39 GMT -5
we didn't have lock down for Asian flu 1957.. I had that and some 30,000 died in the UK the next one was Hong Kong flu in 1967 which nearly 80,000 people died in the UK...my Husband went down with that one of course during an average winter some 300,000 to 400,000 can die.....we live on a cold wet island and in such conditions people die... it is what it is.... Do you mean that the best course would be to let people die in large numbers and thin out the population when things like this come along ? I don't think the population as a whole would agree with that. My mom says they were careful to stay out of crowds and to keep well as much as they could in the past. I'm glad they took the kids out of school. The difference is probably that there is a lot more up to the minute news over the computer so that we know what's going on. There is a huge denial here. Why is it that we teach Darwin's theory and think that magically, somehow, it doesn't apply to the human race? Forget notions of a possible vaccine, the simple truth is you have to build herd immunity. That means: Some will die, some won't even know they had it, and the vast majority will recover from varying degrees of symptoms. That's how it works. The fittest survive. |
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Jessiealan
xr
Member of the Month, October 2013
Posts: 8,726 
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Post by Jessiealan on May 10, 2020 9:28:49 GMT -5
Do you mean that the best course would be to let people die in large numbers and thin out the population when things like this come along ? I don't think the population as a whole would agree with that. My mom says they were careful to stay out of crowds and to keep well as much as they could in the past. I'm glad they took the kids out of school. The difference is probably that there is a lot more up to the minute news over the computer so that we know what's going on. There is a huge denial here. Why is it that we teach Darwin's theory and think that magically, somehow, it doesn't apply to the human race? Forget notions of a possible vaccine, the simple truth is you have to build herd immunity. That means: Some will die, some won't even know they had it, and the vast majority will recover from varying degrees of symptoms. That's how it works. The fittest survive. and if you had children NOT among the fittest, you'd send them out into the crowds and cheerfully let them die? I doubt it. It is much easier to wax sacrificial than to practice it. |
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Post by annaj26 on May 10, 2020 16:56:31 GMT -5
There is a huge denial here. Why is it that we teach Darwin's theory and think that magically, somehow, it doesn't apply to the human race? Forget notions of a possible vaccine, the simple truth is you have to build herd immunity. That means: Some will die, some won't even know they had it, and the vast majority will recover from varying degrees of symptoms. That's how it works. The fittest survive. and if you had children NOT among the fittest, you'd send them out into the crowds and cheerfully let them die? I doubt it. It is much easier to wax sacrificial than to practice it. A very good point, Jessie. Attitude has a lot to do with leading up to actions. |
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Post by mouse on May 11, 2020 3:59:21 GMT -5
neither Fret or myself wrote anything about letting people die.. so how has it been construed that we did … perhaps we are more pragmatic and go with the flow … ie what cannot be cured must be endured...….
what I would find interesting is if it were possible to find out who in the past had had either Asian or HongKong flu or Sars...and do these people have a type of immunity against these coronaviruses when they break out and if so can it be passed on to any children born after infection ……… is it pure luck that some people survive and others don't even know they have had it,even so the rate of survival is excellent although some are left with on going probleems
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Post by fretslider on May 11, 2020 4:06:05 GMT -5
There is a huge denial here. Why is it that we teach Darwin's theory and think that magically, somehow, it doesn't apply to the human race? Forget notions of a possible vaccine, the simple truth is you have to build herd immunity. That means: Some will die, some won't even know they had it, and the vast majority will recover from varying degrees of symptoms. That's how it works. The fittest survive. and if you had children NOT among the fittest, you'd send them out into the crowds and cheerfully let them die? I doubt it. It is much easier to wax sacrificial than to practice it. That's why we have more than one as a rule. You seem oblivious of the changes that came after the war. People had large families for obvious reasons. They died a lot. |
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Post by fretslider on May 11, 2020 4:18:58 GMT -5
and if you had children NOT among the fittest, you'd send them out into the crowds and cheerfully let them die? I doubt it. It is much easier to wax sacrificial than to practice it. A very good point, Jessie. Attitude has a lot to do with leading up to actions. Attitudes have changed ...childhood is becoming undermined by risk aversion. Activities and experiences that previous generations of children enjoyed without a second thought have been relabelled as troubling or dangerous, while the adults who still permit them are branded as irresponsible. At the extreme society appears to have become unable to cope with any adverse outcomes whatsoever, no matter how trivial or improbable.www.bl.uk/collection-items/no-fear-growing-up-in-a-risk-averse-society-summaryIt isn't just childhood now. Risk aversion is destroying [British] society. The young are least at risk from the virus - check the data - adults who should be able to cope and set an example clearly cannot. |
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Alpha 
