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Coronavirus deaths hitting zero by May 15 Projection

sglowrider

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White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett created a baffling 'cubic model' showing coronavirus deaths would hit 0 by May 15. It turns out he used a basic Excel function for his controversial projection.
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tru...-function-cubic-model-coronavirus-2020-5?IR=T

  • A controversial White House economic advisor acknowledged his "cubic model" demonstrating zero coronavirus deaths by May 15 was generated by "a canned function on Excel, a cubic polynomial."
  • The model sparked a storm of criticism among outside economists who called it "utterly superficial and misleading" on Twitter.
  • It also set off one of Trump's top economic advisors, who went after an Obama economist that earlier had fiery words for the modeling.

White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett helped devise a "cubic model" that forecasted coronavirus deaths hitting zero by May 15. It immediately sparked a massive backlash among economists when the model was posted Tuesday on the Twitter account for the Council of Economic Advisors.

Now Hassett says it was never meant to be viewed as a model of a virus.

Instead, he says, it's supposed to be another method to illustrate a simple math formula used in Excel. He wanted to produce a graph mirroring the forecast of daily virus deaths from the Institute of Health Metrics of Evaluation at the University of Washington.

"It's not an alternative to the model, it's just a different way of visualizing the model," Hassett said in an interview with The New York Times. Calling the criticism "silly," he said the model was never shown to President Donald Trump or members of the coronavirus task force.

He described the model as one meant to level the swings of reported cases which vary each day, and he used "just a canned function in Excel, a cubic polynomial," according to the newspaper.


The curve in the cubic model reaches its peak in mid-April and swoops back down through the end of May.

Yet after the chart was posted, outside economists assailed the model for wrongly suggesting the caseloads of coronavirus were precipitously falling. They believed it was a signal the Trump administration was wielding erroneous data in its drive to reopen the American economy.

The death toll from the virus surpassed 70,000 this week, and over a month has passed since there were fewer than 1,000 deaths. On Tuesday alone, over 2,000 Americans died from the virus, and the number of recorded infections is rising.

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Not many people knew Excel was so, so powerful, strong... powerful a computer, adding machine. Not many people heard of excel....

Only the best people and this is what you get...

 
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