Regional now- and forecasting for data reported with delay: toward surveillance of COVID-19 infections

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - Governments around the world continue to act to contain and mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The rapidly evolving situation compels officials and executives...     

Towards a re-conceptualization of flow in social contexts

The antecedents and outcomes of individual-level flow are well documented in a large body of literature. However, flow does not only occur in isolation - quite to the contrary, recent evidence suggests that social interaction can facilitate the experience of flow. Therefore, we propose a taxonomy, which distinguishes five different flow states according to two global factors: interactional synchrony and self-other overlap. Solitary flow bears all characteristics developed by Csikszentmihalyi. Co-active flow is facilitated or hampered by the presence of other people. Private interactive flow emerges on the grounds of a minimal unidirectional interaction with more passive others; only the active subject is in flow. In shared interactive flow, a fully synchronized activity between group members takes place and all group members are in flow. In group flow, all members reach a level of complete self-other overlap with the group, which leads to a collective experience of flow on the group-level. In addition to differences and commonalities of the different types of flow, suggestions for how to induce and study social flow are discussed.     

Infant motor development predicts the dynamics of movement during sleep

The characteristics of infant sleep change over the first year. Generally, infants wake and move less at night as they grow older. However, acquisition of new motor skills leads to temporary increases in night waking and movement at night. Indeed, sleep-dependent movement at night is important for sensorimotor development. Nevertheless, little is known about how movement during sleep changes as infants accrue locomotor experience. The current study investigated whether infant sleep and movement during sleep were predicted by infants' walking experience. Seventy-eight infants wore an actigraph to measure physical activity during sleep. Parents reported when their infants first walked across a room >10 feet without stopping or falling. Infants in the midst of walking skill acquisition had worse sleep than an age-group estimate. Infants with more walk experience had more temporally sporadic movement during sleep and a steeper hourly increase in physical activity over the course of the night. Ongoing motor skill consolidation changes the characteristics of movement during sleep and may alter sleep state-dependent memory consolidation. We propose a model whereby changes in gross motor activity during night sleep reflect movement-dependent consolidation.     

THE MARKET SHARE IMPACT OF SERVICE FAILURES

This paper develops a simple but powerful model that relates service satisfaction/dissatisfaction to market share. The model is based on an intuitive service satisfaction framework that relates three service system parameters (service success rate, complaint rate, and service recovery rate) to the percent of satisfied customers. A dynamic model is then posited that relates the defection rate and the addition rate to market share changes. The service satisfaction/market share model yields useful insights into how market share is influenced by these service system parameters. The surprisingly simple model predicts changes in market share due to changes in customer satisfaction.     

Understanding Patterns of Publishing Activity in Academic Research Occupations*

While it is widely understood that faculty in various disciplines tend to publish at different rates and in different forms, knowledge of these differences is too limited to facilitate systematically differentiated performance appraisal and reward systems. In this study, theory concerning knowledge production system characteristics as influences on individual performance is applied to academic research occupations using a classification scheme developed by Biglan [4]. Regression analysis is applied to a general (industry-wide) sample of United States faculty, with publishing patterns as performance measures. Each dimension of the classification scheme is found to have predictive validity. Output patterns are consistent with a conceptualization of research occupations in terms of (1) transformational/technological processes, (2) research mission, and (3) input/subject matter characteristics. The results offer a basis for generating disciplinary publishing norms and differentiated reward systems.     

SEIR Model to address the impact of face masks amid COVID-19 pandemic

Early in the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), face masks were used extensively by the general public in several Asian countries. The lower transmission rate of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Asian countries compared with Western countries suggested that the wider community use of face masks has the potential to decrease transmission of SARS-CoV-2. A risk assessment model named Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Recovered (SEIR) model is used to quantitatively evaluate the potential impact of community face masks on SARS-CoV-2 reproduction number (R₀) and peak number of infectious persons. For a simulated population of one million, the model showed a reduction in R₀ of 49% and 50% when 60% and 80% of the population wore masks, respectively. Moreover, we present a modified model that considers the effect of mask-wearing after community vaccination. Interestingly mask-wearing still provided a considerable benefit in lowering the number of infectious individuals. The results of this research are expected to help public health officials in making prompt decisions involving resource allocation and crafting legislation.     

Pareto models for top incomes and wealth

Top incomes are often related to Pareto distribution. To date, economists have mostly used Pareto Type I distribution to model the upper tail of income and wealth distribution. It is a parametric distribution, with interesting properties, that can be easily linked to economic theory. In this paper, we first show that modeling top incomes with Pareto Type I distribution can lead to biased estimation of inequality, even with millions of observations. Then, we show that the Generalized Pareto distribution and, even more, the Extended Pareto distribution, are much less sensitive to the choice of the threshold. Thus, they can provide more reliable results. We discuss different types of bias that could be encountered in empirical studies and, we provide some guidance for practice. To illustrate, two applications are investigated, on the distribution of income in South Africa in 2012 and on the distribution of wealth in the United States in 2013.