Tips from Youyang Gu, the pandemic’s star data scientist who had never worked on healthcare models
Youyang Gu says anyone can manipulate data to fit the narrative they believe in, which is why it is important to making testable hypotheses; image credit: youyanggu.com
Synopsis
Learn to approach science as a method of finding the truth, rather than the truth itself, says Gu, 27, an MIT electrical engineering and computer science grad. Starting off by simply googling “epidemiology”, he went on to develop a highly successful Covid-19 model that combines machine learning with a classic infectious-disease simulator.
By Siobhan Roberts The data scientist Youyang Gu thinks of himself as a realist—he declares it in his Twitter profile: “Presenter of unbiased takes. Realist.” When he noticed the scattershot covid-19 projections last spring—one model projected 2 million US deaths by the summer, another predicted 60,000—Gu questioned whether that was as good as the modeling could be. He decided to take a shot at making a covid-19 model himself. “My whole entire
BY
MIT
11 mins read
Gift A Story
Share member-only stories with your friends or family and help them read it for free.
Gifting Limit Reached!
Hey , no more stories left for you to gift.
No worries! You will get a limit of 15 stories next month to share with your friends and family.
Get Unlimited Access to The Economic Times
