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On the Yost Index page elsewhere on this site, you may now find national Yost Indexes at the census tract and block group levels for 1990, 2000, 2009-2013 and 2014-2018. The first two were derived from the decennial censuses while the last two were derived from the American Community Survey. Note that the 1990 andContinue reading “A few minor updates to the Yost Index”

Today’s post covers some work I did a few years ago to visualize the diffusion of digital mammography in New York State. I obtained Medicare claims data that let me distinguish between mammography types based on billing codes. I then divided the state into small grid cells and used a spatial filtering approach to findContinue reading “Visualizing the diffusion of digital mammography”

At 10:00 pm on Christmas Eve, my inbox chimed. Pictures of my nieces all snug in their beds? No, an invitation from a scientific journal to review an article on the topic of dengue surveillance in Thailand, kindly requesting that I take no more than seven days. This was not spam, it was legit. ColleaguesContinue reading “Where do I publish my scientific findings?”

(The allegory of the auto recall) Suppose a car manufacturer had a reason to believe that a defect in some of its engines were resulting in poor fuel economy, but it did not know which ones. Rather than have every single driver come into the dealership for a diagnostic test – a costly and time-consumingContinue reading “Measuring data completeness”

(originally posted in February, 2019. Reposted November, 2020) It is not hard to find examples of pundits who have publicly declared that the forty-some year-old War on Cancer has been lost. “Losing the War on Cancer” was the subtitle of a well-received book (1). Scientific American called it a “bust” (2). It’s not just bloggers and reporters:Continue reading “Winning the war on cancer, imperceptibly”