Assessment, Statistics, and Research

 Covid- 19 Weekly Chart of US deaths. Legend M21 to A25 and M1 represent the Month and Day. The numbers below the dates are for the 7-days including the date. For example, M1 = 11,989 deaths in the 7-days before and including May 1, 2020. The first M dates are for March, then A for the April dates. The data are beginning to look like a bell curve, but with many states allowing more freedom of movement, it is too early to tell if there will be a rise in a week or two. The data are from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-daily-covid-deaths I use the download data file and create the chart in Excel. Read more about statistics in these two books. Creating Surveys  on   AMAZON Read more about basic statistics in  APPLIED STATISTICS: CONCEPTS FOR COUNSELORS  at AMAZON Connections Follow this blog My Page      www.suttong.com My Books     AMAZON       GOOGLE PLAY STORE FACEBOOK     Geoff W. Sutton

Are we there yet? The most recent weekly data suggest a downward move in the number of people who died in the past week. In the previous chart, there appeared to be a channel or range between 1800 and 2000 per day with some anomalies. Now that we have more data, it is possible to group the data. I am avoiding curves and means because it is not clear that there is a curve or that the data are normally distributed. The bar chart offers a clear picture of rapid increase and possibly (and hopefully a decline. In this chart, I used weekly totals beginning with March 7, 2020 (M = March, A = April). Important note: The numbers may be revised. This chart is for educational purposes only and not for planning. Here is my source for the data   https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-daily-covid-deaths Date               Deaths M21 213 M28 1447 A4 5450 A11 11620 A18 18277 A25 13963 Read more about statistics in

How will we know if opening up the country is safe? My bottom line answer is when people stop dying from Covid-19. But tracking actual deaths can help us know whether we are making progress or not. We can measure progress against our own baseline. The chart provides an estimate of a baseline, which will need to be corrected when additional deaths are recorded. Think of the baseline as a channel. The national US baseline appears to be in the range of 1800 to 2000 with some outliers starting 8 April 2020. I am not using averages because the data are not obviously normalized. I prefer to look at a range of relatively stable values, which can be called a channel. The sharp deviations have to be ignored to get a sense of what is "typical" of a pattern. A new relatively stable range above or below this range should help us determine a new trend. If the numbers are corrected, we will need to revisit the range. I am looking at a move of about 20% either way for evi