Mostly Biomathematics Lunchtime Seminar

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Universal statistics of incubation times and other applications of simple diffusion models

Speaker: Yuri Bakhtin, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 1314

Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2019, 12:30 p.m.

Synopsis:

When available, the data on incubation periods, i.e., times between the exposure to an infection and the onset of symptoms, exhibit striking universal features over a range of diseases and associated time scales. In this talk, I will show how these features such as right-skewness and more detailed distributional properties can be explained with the help of models based on diffusion processes. I will also have time to talk about applications of similar models to reaction/decision times in psychology, about limitations of such modeling, and about the problem of universality of stopping/halting times in decision making /computing in general.