Dr. Marzia Cremona – Using Functional Data Analysis to Better Understand COVID-19 Mortality
Original Article Reference
This SciPod is a summary of the paper ‘Functional data analysis characterizes the shapes of the first COVID-19 epidemic wave in Italy’, published in Scientific Reports. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95866-y
About this episode
Italy was the first European country to experience a major outbreak of COVID-19. Across the country, intriguingly different patterns of mortality were seen across regions. Dr. Marzia Cremona from Université Laval, in collaboration with a global team of researchers from the Pennsylvania State University and the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, used novel statistical tools from the field of functional data analysis (FDA) to identify several important factors contributing to these differences. This work has critical implications for policymaking and also demonstrates the useful application of FDA techniques to epidemiological research.
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