Population Dynamics Lab

The Download

Increasing the Lifespan of Software for Demographic Analysis

Many researchers face challenges with computational reproducibility. For instance, running analysis code written just a year earlier can be problematic. Even if it worked flawlessly and gave the expected results earlier, it might fail due to errors now (see Figure 1). These issues are typically…

Egor Kotov, Esther Denecke

Unlocking Population Estimation Using Readily Available Data

Population estimation techniques rely on past population data, number of births, deaths, and migration. While various techniques have been used to accurately produce population estimates, the gold standard has been the cohort-component method. However, this method is limited by the fact that some…

Knowing and understanding change: Methods insights using historical pandemic data

Pandemic diseases, like COVID-19, have far-reaching effects that are difficult to identify or predict during the course of the pandemic itself. Case numbers and mortality due to pandemic diseases ebb and flow, but even after time has passed, it is useful to know (1) when the waves occurred, (2) if…

Taylor van Doren

The Denominator

Expanding the Lifespan of Software for Demographic Analysis with Containers: An Application of Spatial Sampling

Software, such as specific R packages, evolve over time, which may prevent older analysis code from working as expected. For example, default values for arguments in a function can change. Therefore, for computational reproducibility, knowing which specific R and package versions were used to run…

Egor Kotov, Esther Denecke

Unlocking Population Estimation Using Readily Available Data: Applying the Simplified Censal Ratio Method

Population estimation is generally a straightforward process: any population must result from a past population number plus the births minus the deaths plus the net migration. This cohort-component method is often considered the ‘gold standard’ for population estimation (Gerland 2014). However…

Estimating time points of significant change in cause-specific mortality: Joinpoint regression in R

Those engaged in demographic research are often interested in how and why the vital demographic processes (fertility, mortality, and migration) change in response to certain ecological, cultural, or behavioral stimuli. Today, in the midst of a global pandemic event, epidemiologists and…

Taylor van Doren