Explainers
JUNIPER is very pleased to collaborate with the fantastic team at Plus Magazine. Articles and podcasts produced by Rachel Thomas and Marianne Freiberger at Plus provide an explainer on the key mathematical modelling work done by JUNIPER members to a general audience. On this page you will find explainers to key epidemic modelling concepts as well as areas of current research. Full details of all content produced with Plus is available here.
e for exponential
At the beginning of an epidemic the number of infected people grows exponentially. But why does the number e appear in descriptions of this growth?
What is the generation time of a disease?
To work out how a disease will spread you need to know the time between infections.
How can maths fight an epidemic?
How can we use mathematics to model the spread of a disease?
The doubling time of a disease
The doubling time of a disease is the time it takes for the number of cases of the disease to double. How do you calculate it?
The growth rate of a disease
What is the growth rate and what does it tell us about an epidemic?
R and herd immunity
What is herd immunity and what does it have to do with a number called R?
Maths in a minute: Exponential growth
What do we mean when we say that something grows exponentially?
Julia Gog's mathematical toolkit for pandemics
A mathematical, and personal, look into how we all had to balance the different harms of the virus and the steps we took against it.
SBIDER Presents: Shining a light on COVID modelling
Was the mathematical modelling projecting the course of the pandemic too pessimistic, or were the projections justified? Matt Keeling tells our colleagues from SBIDER about the COVID models that fed into public policy.
More than maths: Understanding infectious diseases in care homes
Some diseases spread far more quickly in care homes and other settings with vulnerable people. How can maths help? And what help does maths need?