For one, you don’t know how many people are infected. Not everyone’s tested. And some countries may have manipulated their figures.
These puzzles are all raising the intellectual curiosity of the systematic crowd.
Yang Liu started collecting data on China’s outbreak in early February. The risk analyst at at HSBC Holdings Plc spent two weeks of his own time penning a paper on how to use the so-called Markov model to work out the true virus fatality rate.
In his view, the statistical challenge of working out the sequence of different scenarios isn’t a world away from his regular gig modeling corporate insolvencies.
“It is after work hours but that’s sort of a way to get myself occupied,” Liu said. “By doing this I find myself still connected to the outside world.”
--With assistance from Dani Burger.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.