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Thread: A comedian accurately predicting Covid-19 cases in NSW

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    Default A comedian accurately predicting Covid-19 cases in NSW

    comedian who has been accurately 'predicting' the number of new coronavirus cases in New South Wales each day.

    Inside Information OR simple maths ?


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    If he is using simple mathematics, then perhaps he could share the algorithm. It might make Gladys's job a bit easier.
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    After 5 days correctly predicting the daily cases, today he predicted 109 cases.. lol

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    ‘Comedian’… lol.

    Most turds my dogs back out are funnier than this bloke.

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    You can use maths to determine if he is using maths or inside information.
    Predicting roughly how many new cases there will be is not all that hard.

    At the most basic level you can draw a graph and join the dots. Any primary school kid can do that.
    That is a surprisingly easy and accurate way to do it. You expect variations (error bars). So if day one has 80 new cases, day two 90 cases, day three 100 new cases....
    well it doesn't take Steven Hawking to make a guess that 110 is a good bet. If you knew the error bars would be +/- 2 cases then anything from 108 to 112.

    We can use calculus to work out how many cases are unaccounted for in the community and the rate of virility.
    So while cases might be increasing in a linear fashion, it means that you're barely keeping up with the virus.
    If the transmission rate is 1:10 and there are 10 new cases for every 1 unaccounted for which will go on to cause another 10 cases tomorrow.
    If the number of cases each day increases (double differentiation) then the virus is out of control. 10 new cases today and 11 new tomorrow now means that 1 escapee is now 1.1 escapees. This might sound illogical that 0.1 people are infected, but it can scale to larger population or it's two wild cases but now only each infecting say 6 cases.

    If the number of new cases every day is say 100, 96, 93, 89 .... At a ratio of 10:1 it still means there are always 10 or 9 wild cases unaccounted for. Some days they get ahead and other days they fall behind. You can see the reporting of "cases in the community" who were about half of the NSW cases. This would imply the infection rate is about 2:1 which is amazingly good. That tends to imply that measures like face masks are working very well, but the number of say 50 people wandering around means the restrictions are not tough enough.
    This however probably isn't what is actually happening.
    You might have 50 people in the community and 40 of them have been keeping well within the restrictions so even if they were infectious the amount of cases they are responsible for is close to zero. The other 10 are responsible for about 10 new cases each on average. Which could mean a few different things from mask effectiveness to contagiousness.

    So where does that leave our comedian ?
    Well we can see there error bars on the graph are huge.


    That means guessing the exact number for the next day is at odds of about 100:1
    If I was making a good guess, my error rate varies from about 30 to 15.
    But for a commedian to get it accurate 5 days in a row. Even if we break this down to a yes or no result. (where the odds of getting it wrong are greater than getting it right).
    Five correct guesses is 2^5 = 32:1 not astronomical on those terms, but if you consider even if he's 1 case off, the odds change to 3^5 = 243:1
    Again, not astronomical and if you're the government trying to prosecute him, your odds are even higher. Commonly referred to as "fat chance".

    So despite the evidence not being beyond reasonable doubt, it is also reasonable and likely he has inside information.
    The government has a leak. IF they were smart, they would fix the leak and poison the well.
    Attempting to prosecute the free media for the crimes of their staff is going to land them in more hot water with the courts than the comedian faces.

    And from his point of view, he's not all that smart to make it so obvious. He's also not to smart to poke the tiger with a stick.
    The behaviour is to gain publicity by making himself look clever. The publicity is what he seeks, not the recognition for any intelligence.

    I agree with PRJ .. he's just not that funny. Though I also find it hard to find good comedians these days. I watch Just for laughs (Montreal) and the amount of good laughs I get seems to be down every year. The sad excuse for Just for laughs Australia, a re-run of MASH which I've seen for the 50th time is often funnier.

    I need to start some new threads... Who are today's best comedians and from the space thread, what and where are the best amusement rides.
    Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.

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