The 27-year-old who became a Covid-19 data superstar
If only he could predict now when the third stimulus check will arrive!
Via Bloomberg: “Competing to see who can do the best accurate coronavirus forecast, it was global institutions against a man who lives with his parents in Santa Clara.
“Spring 2020 saw the introduction of the celebrity statistical model. When the public tried to gauge how big the coronavirus could be in March and April, two forecasting systems were repeatedly referred to: One was built by Imperial College London, the other by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle.
“But the models made very different predictions. Imperial warned that the US could see as many as possible 2 million deaths from Covid-19 by summerThe IHME prognosis was far more conservative, forecasting about 60,000 deaths by August. It turned out that no one was very close either. The US finally reached around 160,000 deaths in early August.
“The huge discrepancy in this spring’s forecast figures caught the attention of a company at the time The 26-year-old data scientist named Youyang Gu. The young man had a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and another degree in mathematics, but no formal training in a pandemic-related field such as medicine or epidemiology. Still, he thought his background in working with data models could come in handy during the pandemic.
“In mid-April, while living with his parents in Santa Clara, California, Gu spent a week building his own Covid death predictor and website that displayed the morbid information. Soon his model began It provides more accurate results than those produced by institutions with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and decades of experience.
“While Gu is certainly not perfect, Gu’s model has done well from the start. In late April, he predicted that 80,000 people would die in the United States by May 9. The actual death toll was 79,926. A similar forecast by IHME for late April predicted the U.S. would suffer no more than 80,000 deaths by 2020. Gu also forecast 90,000 deaths on May 18 and 100,000 deaths on May 27 and again agreed with the correct numbers.
“Where IHME expected the virus to go away due to social distancing and other policy measures, Gu predicted there would be a second major wave of infections and deaths as many states reopened due to lockdowns. “