An update on my flow-field mortality forecasting work. I compared to Lee-Carter, Hyndman & Ullah, and bayesLife/Mortcast using the HMD and WPP 2024. Preliminary results: samclark.net/site/news-pa....
Sam Clark
@samclark.net
Demographer, epidemiologist, and data scientist who develops new methods and does research in demography and epidemiology - samclark.net. Mountain bike rider.
There’s a long tradition of using the SVD matrix factorization to model and forecast mortality. I used the higher-order SVD to decompose a 4-way tensor of mortality and explore the possibilities that this gives us. * arxiv.org/abs/2603.20518 * arxiv.org/abs/2603.24299 * samclark.shinyapps.io/mdmx/
Multi-dimensional Mortality (MDMx): Sex-Age-Specific Model Life Tables, Fitting, Prediction from Summary Mortality Indicators, and Forecasting
Demographers rely on a variety of tools and methods to work with mortality schedules - model life tables, fitting methods, summary-indicator prediction, and forecasting - largely developed independent...
arxiv.org
RIP DHS. We expected this, but it’s still a shock. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/h...
Trump Administration Ends Global Health Research Program
The Demographic and Health Surveys were the only sources of reliable information in many countries on metrics such as mortality, nutrition and education.
nytimes.com
Annual budget of USAID is about $50B. Annual budget of USA is about $7T. Eliminating USAID does not save anything in this context.
"Treatment Effect Estimation with Observational Network Data using Machine Learning" Arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2206.14591 #rstats code: github.com/corinne-rahe... #stats
Huge congratulations to my Florida State Univ Population Center colleagues Mike McFarland and Matt Hauer (@drdemography.bsky.social) on this important and very newsworthy (!!) paper on the impact of leaded gasoline on US public health. #demography acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
After I moved to Canada a couple of years ago I realized that I was no longer constantly running a massive stress routine in the background of my mind worrying about health care and guns. It was weirdly noticeable only when it stopped.
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social is accepting applications for Fall 2025 for the PhD program in Demography AND the Graduate Group in Sociology & Demography. Seeking a diverse and strong cohort; applications DUE 12/17/2024. Learn more about the program: www.demog.berkeley.edu/graduate-pro...
Graduate Program - Department of Demography
Graduate Program UC Berkeley Demography offers three graduate degree tracks independently and in conjunction with the department of Sociology. Ph.D. in Demography The doctoral program is intended to p...
demog.berkeley.edu
Falling #fertility across the world will lead to significant changes in countries' age pyramids. By 2100, when today's newborns are in their 70s, they (or their elders!) will be the largest age group in many countries. #demography #rstats code: github.com/schmert/bone...
Looks like it might be time to reiterate what psychologists have been screaming from the rooftops for years: learning styles as it is presented to the general public is a myth and it damages students’ sense of efficacy www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Beware the myth: learning styles affect parents’, children’s, and teachers’ thinking about children’s academic potential - npj Science of Learning
npj Science of Learning - Beware the myth: learning styles affect parents’, children’s, and teachers’ thinking about children’s academic potential
nature.com
Scientists, academics, researchers: We’re excited to share that @altmetric.com is now tracking mentions of your research on Bluesky! 🧪
Altmetric@altmetric.com · 2y agoThere are already many articles for which there is more attention on Bluesky than on other comparable micro-blogging sites, meaning the academic community and the general public have clearly adopted Bluesky as one of its core places to disseminate and discuss new research. A Place of Joy.
Saloni, Edouard, and Lucas wrote up the history of Our World in Data during the COVID pandemic. It's about the impact we hoped to achieve and how it felt to us during that time. ourworldindata.org/owid-covid-h...
How our team at Our World in Data became a global data source on COVID-19
Our small team made COVID-19 data clear, reliable, and accessible to a global audience. This is how it happened.
ourworldindata.org
Just realized BlueSky allows sharing valuable stuff cause it doesn't punish links. 🤩 Let's start with "What are embeddings" by @vickiboykis.com The book is a great summary of embeddings, from history to modern approaches. The best part: it's free. Link: vickiboykis.com/what_are_emb...
At @rOpenSci.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy we're pairing first-time code contributors with experienced maintainers. If you are an rOpenSci or other #RStats package author and want to help build the road for new contributors and get co-maintainers, sign up for co-working! ropensci.org/blog/2024/10...
Looking for Maintainers to Support First-Time Contributors
Announcing a Community Call and Coworking sessions to support first contributions
ropensci.org
Important to understand that (1) political appointees, not the university administration, are doing this; (2) they're not cancelling courses, but removing them from the list that satisfy breadth reqmts (i.e. death by strangling rather than a knife to the back). www.tallahassee.com/story/news/l...
FSU board OKs removal of over 400 courses from general education offerings after review
“We’re living through an era of legislature-driven higher education reform,” FSU Provost Jim Clark said.
tallahassee.com
AI for medical transcription - in this case Whisper sneaks in its own hallucinatory phrases apnews.com/article/ai-a... though i wish the AI did invent ‘hyperactivated antibiotics’ we are going to need them soon 😏 h/t @placentadoc.bsky.social #MedSky
Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said
Whisper is a popular transcription tool powered by artificial intelligence, but it has a major flaw. It makes things up that were never said.
apnews.com
For the Thanksgiving break I will be in Guyana visiting one of our children who is working there for two years. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana
Guyana - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Just set up an account for the openVA Team @openva.net where I will post things related to the group.
CGD's very own starter pack... experts and staff former and present... bsky.app/starter-pack...
Can anyone give lit tips for papers showing this qualitative age pattern of a mortality rate ratio (e.g. frail vs not, sick vs not, high SES vs low, in nursing home vs general pop, with disease vs without)?
Reading Peter Turchin’s interesting and provocative books. This characterization of social science disciplines in ‘Ultrasociety’ is amusing:
