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\centerline{MONT 100N -- Modeling the Environment}
\centerline{Chapter 5 Project -- The 2014-15 Ebola Outbreak.}
\centerline{October 30, 2017}
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\noindent
The Chapter Project for this chapter will be to continue the study of the 2014-2015
Ebola outbreak begun class (the same example appears in Examples 5.10 and 5.11 in
the text).  The data we were using there comes from the Wikipedia page
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\centerline{\tt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West$\_$African$\_$Ebola$\_$virus$\_$epidemic$\_$}
\centerline{\tt timeline$\_$of$\_$reported$\_$cases$\_$and$\_$deaths}
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On that page, you will see a large table with the data we used at the bottom and rows
above that giving the later course of the outbreak, all the way to November 2015,
when the outbreak was declared to be concluded.  (The rows are in reverse chronological
order, for some reason.) The cumulative cases and 
deaths are also broken down by country, with separate totals for Guinea, Liberia,
and Sierra Leone. 

The data you will be working with has been entered into the spreadsheet file
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\centerline{\tt EbolaOutbreakFullRecord.xlsx} 
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\noindent
that you will download from the course
homepage to start your work.  


\subsection*{Questions} 
Most of the work you will do will involve analyzing subsets of the data along
the lines of what we did in the examples above, to try to develop answers
to the following questions.
\begin{enumerate}
\item[(A)]  Considering the total reported cases and total deaths for the whole
course of the outbreak, for how long did the cases and deaths continue increasing
at about $2\%$ per day?  When does it seem that the tide started to turn, in the 
sense that the epidemic was starting to ``slow down'' noticeably 
from the $2\%$ per day rate of increase.\footnote{It had to do that at some time; if it didn't, then
we would probably all be dead by now!}  Try fitting models starting at March 22, 2014, 
but going farther than we did above.  
Some landmarks to watch for are November 2, 2014,  27 May 2015, 26 July 2015, and so forth.  
Explain how you are determining that ``turn of the tide.''  Also, can you identify
something definite that happened about that time that might have been a cause
for the epidemic starting to come under control?  
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\item[(B)]  Examining the data, it is pretty clear that the course of the outbreak
was different in Guinea as compared to Liberia and Sierra Leone.  Fit exponential
models for initial phases of the epidemic in each ot the three countries separately.
Were the numbers of infections and deaths increasing at a rate of $2\%$ per day at the 
start in all three countries?  
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\item[(C)] Not everyone who was infected with Ebola died as a result of the 
infection.  Some people
actually recovered.  How did the percentage of infected people who recovered change
over the course of the epidemic?  Consider both the aggregate figures and the figures
by country.  What type of model fits that data the best?  Note: One would hope that
as an epidemic progresses, health care professionals would accumulate useful experience
in how to treat the disease successfully so that their treatment outcomes would improve
over time.  Was that the case here?
\end{enumerate}

Assignment:  Submit a spreadsheet showing all of your calculations with the 
Ebola data set.  Answer the questions above in a separate text document.  As always, document
your sources if you consult things other than the Wikipedia page given above.
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