
Code Review of Ferguson’s Model - alexkearns
https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/
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feross
Some mind-boggling quotes from the article:

"Investigation reveals ... the code produces critically different results,
even for identical starting seeds and parameters."

"In issue 116 a UK “red team” at Edinburgh University reports that they tried
to use a mode that stores data tables in a more efficient format for faster
loading, and discovered – to their surprise – that the resulting predictions
varied by around 80,000 deaths after 80 days"

"In issue #30, someone reports that the model produces different outputs
depending on what kind of computer it’s run on (regardless of the number of
CPUs). Again, the explanation is that although this new problem “will just add
to the issues” … “This isn’t a problem running the model in full as it is
stochastic anyway”."

"Much of the code consists of formulas for which no purpose is given. John
Carmack (a legendary video-game programmer) surmised that some of the code
might have been automatically translated from FORTRAN some years ago."

"Despite being aware of the severe problems in their code that they “haven’t
had time” to fix, the Imperial team continue to add new features; for
instance, the model attempts to simulate the impact of digital contact tracing
apps."

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soniman
How is this not at the top of HN? This is hilarious. "Just average all the
runs and call it stochastic, nobody will notice that we can't reproduce the
results"!

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dpoochieni
I know, there is another posting and it has even been flagged. I do not know
why, some very interesting points were being made on both sides

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galkk
Names article "code review".

No actual code review is done. Out of 2 screens of text, 1 link to actual code
line.

