We will examine some specific models of contagion. This lecture provides an overview of disease clustering methods. It opens with a discussion of the role of disease clustering in scientific inference, and then describes tests for temporal clustering, spatial clustering, and space-time interaction. These are presented within the framework of global, local and focused tests. Next, disease surveillance methods are described, and the lecture concludes with recommendations regarding hypothesis vs. data driven approaches.
Many spatial statistics are special cases of a flexible mathematical form called the Gamma product.
This lecture describes the Gamma product and its constituent parts, including proximity metrics, data metrics, and spatial randomization procedures. Dr. Jacquez will provide an introduction to compartmental models, which we can use to simulate or model a spatial process. He will begin with an introduction, and finish with a discussion of how spatial aspects can be modelled with compartmental models. The data may be disease rates, or probabilities of disease occurrence, etc. These techniques are notoriously complicated, however, so this will be a rather elementary and descriptive approach to geostatistical modelling.