52. Davies T.P. et al., ‘A mathematical model of the London riots and their policing’, Scientific Reports, 2013.
53. Example: Myers P., ‘Staying streetwise’, Reuters, 8 September 2011.
54. Quoted in: De Castella T. and McClatchey C., ‘UK riots: What turns people into looters?’, BBC News Online. 9 August 2011.
55. Granovetter M., ‘Threshold Models of Collective Behavior’, American Journal of Sociology, 1978.
56. Background from: Johnson N.F. et al., ‘New online ecology of adversarial aggregates: ISIS and beyond’, Science, 2016; Wolchover N., ‘A Physicist Who Models ISIS and the Alt-Right’, Quanta Magazine, 23 August 2017.
57. Bohorquez J.C. et al., ‘Common ecology quantifies human insurgency’, Nature, 2009.
58. Belluck P., ‘Fighting ISIS With an Algorithm, Physicists Try to Predict Attacks’, New York Times, 16 June 2016.
59. Timeline: ‘How The Anthrax Terror Unfolded’, National Public Radio (NPR), 15 February 2011.
60. Cooper B., ‘Poxy models and rash decisions’, PNAS, 2006; Meltzer M.I. et al., ‘Modeling Potential Responses to Smallpox as a Bioterrorist Weapon’, Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2001.
61. I’ve seen the toy train example used in a few fields (e.g. by Emanuel Derman in finance), but particular credit to my old colleague Ken Eames here, who used it very effectively in disease modelling lectures.
62. Meltzer M.I. et al., ‘Estimating the Future Number of Cases in the Ebola Epidemic – Liberia and Sierra Leone, 2014–2015’, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2014.
63. The CDC exponential model estimated around a three-fold increase per month. Therefore a prediction three additional months ahead would have estimated 27-fold more cases than the January value. (The combined population of SL, Liberia and Guinea was around 24 million.)
64. ‘Expert reaction to CDC estimates of numbers of future Ebola cases’, Science Media Centre, 24 September 2014.
65. Background from: Hughes M., ‘Developers wish people would remember what a big deal Y2K bug was’, The Next Web, 26 October 2017; Schofield J., ‘Money we spent’, The Guardian, 5 January 2000.
66. https://twitter.com/JoanneLiu_MSF/status/952834207667097600.
67. In the CDC analysis, cases were scaled up by a factor of 2.5 to account for under-reporting. If we apply the same scaling to the reported cases, this suggests there were around 75,000 infections in reality, a difference of 1.33 million from the CDC prediction. The suggestion that the CDC model with interventions could explain outbreak comes from: Frieden T.R. and Damon I.K., ‘Ebola in West Africa – CDC’s Role in Epidemic Detection, Control, and Prevention’, Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2015.
68. Onishi N., ‘Empty Ebola Clinics in Liberia Are Seen as Misstep in U.S. Relief Effort’, New York Times, 2015.
69. Kucharski A.J. et al., ‘Measuring the impact of Ebola control measures in Sierra Leone’, PNAS, 2015.
70. Camacho A. et al., ‘Potential for large outbreaks of Ebola virus disease’, Epidemics, 2014.
71. Heymann D.L., ‘Ebola: transforming fear into appropriate action’, The Lancet, 2017.
72. Widely attributed, but no clear primary source.
73. By early December, the average reporting delay was 2–3 days. Source: Finger F. et al., ‘Real-time analysis of the diphtheria outbreak in forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals in Bangladesh’, BMC Medicine, 2019.
74. Statistics from: Katz J. and Sanger-Katz M., ‘“The Numbers Are So Staggering.” Overdose Deaths Set a Record Last Year’, New York Times, 29 November 2018; Ahmad F.B. et al., ‘Provisional drug overdose death counts’, National Center for Health Statistics, 2018; Felter C., ‘The U.S. Opioid Epidemic’, Council on Foreign Relations, 26 December 2017; ‘Opioid painkillers “must carry prominent warnings”’. BBC News Online, 28 April 2019.
75. Goodnough A., Katz J. and Sanger-Katz M., ‘Drug Overdose Deaths Drop in U.S. for First Time Since 1990’, New York Times, 17 July 2019.
76. Background and quotes about opioid crisis analysis from author interview with Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, May 2018. Additional details from: Pacula R.L., Testimony presented before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on April 5, 2017.
77. Exponential increase in death rate from 11 per 100,000 in 1979 to 137 per 100,000 in 2015, implying doubling time = 36/log2(137/11) = 10 years.
78. Jalal H., ‘Changing dynamics of the drug overdose epidemic in the United States from 1979 through 2016’, Science, 2018.
79. Mars S.G. ‘“Every ‘never’ I ever said came true”: transitions from opioid pills to heroin injecting’, International Journal of Drug Policy, 2014.
80. TCR Staff, ‘America “Can’t Arrest Its Way Out of the Opioid Epidemic”’, The Crime Report, 16 February 2018.
81. Lum K. and Isaac W., ‘To predict and serve?’ Significance, 7 October 2016.
82. Quotes from author interview with Kristian Lum, January 2018.
83. Perry W.L. et al., ‘Predictive Policing’, RAND Corporation Report, 2013.
84. Whitty C.J.M., ‘What makes an academic paper useful for health policy?’, BMC Medicine, 2015.
85. Dumke M. and Main F., ‘A look inside the watch list Chicago police fought to keep secret’, Associated Press, 18 June 2017.
86. Background on SSL algorithm: Posadas B., ‘How strategic is Chicago’s “Strategic Subjects List”? Upturn investigates’, Medium, 22 June 2017; Asher J. and Arthur R., ‘Inside the Algorithm That Tries to Predict Gun Violence in Chicago’, New York Times, 13 June 2017; Kunichoff Y. and Sier P., ‘The Contradictions of Chicago Police’s Secretive List’, Chicago Magazine, 21 August 2017.
87. According to Posadas (Medium, 2017), proportion high risk: 287,404/398,684 = 0.72. 88,592 of these (31 per cent) have never been arrested or a victim of crime.
88. Hemenway D., While We Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention, (University of California Press, 2009).
89. Background on broken windows approach: Kelling G.L. and Wilson J.Q., ‘Broken Windows’, The Atlantic, March 1982; Harcourt B.E. and Ludwig J., ‘Broken Windows: New Evidence from New York City and a Five-City Social Experiment’, University of Chicago Law Review, 2005.
90. Childress S., ‘The Problem with “Broken Windows” Policing’, Public Broadcasting Service, 28 June 2016.
91. Keizer K. et al., ‘The Spreading of Disorder’, Science, 2008.
92. Keizer K. et al., ‘The Importance of Demonstratively Restoring Order’, PLOS ONE, 2013.
93. Tcherni-Buzzeo M., ‘The “Great American Crime Decline”: Possible explanations’, In Krohn M.D. et al., Handbook on Crime and Deviance, 2nd edition, (Springer, New York 2019).
94. Alternative hypotheses for decline, and accompanying criticism: Levitt S.D., ‘Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline
