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Interpretable, non-mechanistic forecasting using empirical dynamic modeling and interactive visualization

Mason, L. K.; Berrington de Gonzalez, A.; Garcia-Closas, M.; Chanock, S.; Hicks, B.; Almeida, J.

2022-10-25 public and global health
10.1101/2022.10.21.22281384 medRxiv
Show abstract

Forecasting methods are notoriously difficult to interpret, particularly when the relationship between the data and the resulting forecasts is not obvious. Interpretability is an important property of a forecasting method because it allows the user to complement the forecasts with their own knowledge, a process which leads to more applicable results. In general, mechanistic methods are more interpretable than non-mechanistic methods, but they require explicit knowledge of the underlying dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a tool which performs interpretable, non-mechanistic forecasts using interactive visualization and a simple, data-focused forecasting technique. To ensure the work is FAIR and privacy is ensured, we have released the tool as an entirely in-browser web-application.

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