Career story: Official Statistician

It was a desire to travel which first attracted Melissa Rice to a career in the Civil Service. And, even though she hasn't yet done as much travelling as she would like, she already has several job changes under her belt and, as she tells Helen Joyce, opportunities to broaden her horizons in other ways.     

Towards a theory of insect epidemiology

Summary An attempt is made to consolidate and extend some of our current thoughts on insect epidemiology using graphical reproduction models. Starting with a simple model with a single equilibrium point, the elementary hypothesis is proposed that epidemics erupt when this equilibrium point increases substantially through improvement of the insect's habitat. The extension of this model to more than one coincident equilibria, some of which may be locally stable, is discussed and generalized using the theory of habitat suitability. Use of equilibrium manifolds is suggested to permit greater dimensionality. Lastly, an explanation of insect epidemics, based on the effects of time delays in the response of density-dependent processes, is elaborated and generalized. The influence of spatial dimensions and insect dispersal on the theory is discussed. Scientific Paper No. 4890, College of Agriculture Research Center, Washington State University. Modified from a paper presented at the joint meeting of the Sociedad Mexicana de Entomologia and the Pacific and Southwestern Branches of the Entomological Society of America, held at Guadalajara, Mexico, April 17–22, 1977. This work was conducted under Project 102 and was supported by the State of Washington and the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. GB-30752 and GB-34718).     

The pursuit of health

This paper delineates health legislation through a review of the literature as it relates to the cost of medical care; it also demonstrates a death-coding system that would be compatible with the cause of death and not the disease. Three tables and ten figures depict the leading causes of death by number and rate for Georgia and the U.S., 1900–1973; infectious and chronic disease death rates, U.S., 1900–70; cycles of infectious and chronic disease patterns; health expenditures, U.S., 1930–75, per capita and percent of GNP; an epidemiological model for health policy analysis; and sample certificates of death.     

Deviance and Definitional Processes: a Conceptual and Empirical Analysis*

The failure of the labeling perspective to account for informal reaction processes is noted. Viewing informal labeling in terms of emergence and the documentary method, definitional processes are divided into two categories: (1) intra-situational definitions concerning the practical problems of negotiating an inter-actional encounter, and (2) trans-situational definitions in which the actor is evaluated in terms of cultural knowledge and prior experience. A repeated measures experimental study is discussed which indicates that intra-situational and trans-situational definitions are differentially responsive to variations over time in the typicality of an actor's behavior. Implications for the concept of “aligning actions” are discussed.     

An Estimation Problem with Poisson Processes

For n independent Poisson processes such that the i th process has intensity function lM_i(t) =δ_iρ(t; α) we consider estimation of p(t; α) =∫_oρ:(u; α) du. Two procedures are developed, one using exact arrival times, the other using categorical arrival times. Two instances where p(t; α) =p(α t) are investigated further. An example applying the methodology to the active life of a judicial opinion is described.