Review of the mathematical paper
Introduction
The article that is reviewed today is “An introduction to mathematics of HIV/Aids modelling” by Leigh Johnson published in 2004 for Centre of Actuarial Research for University of Cape Town, South Africa.
The article provides an introduction to modelling HIV/Aids transmission as well as survival and focuses on children who lost their parents due to HIV/Aids called orphans. The lack of proper Introduction to the article isn’t easily allowing the reader to understand the purpose of the paper. Reading the first section of the paper, called “Epidemiological Terminology” one is presented with variety of scientific definitions such us Prevalence or Incidence of a disease, hence the very first interpretation …show more content…
Alongside referencing other work through the paper, very often Johnson is sending the reader to the source if one wanted to find out more information for a given topic. Example of such situation is at the end of section “Improving the modelling of HIV transmission” where Johnson is finishing the section with a reference to Garnett and Bowden paper for further information. The main work that Johnson is building his conclusions on is The ASSA 2000 Suite of models. He mentions it at the beginning of section 4, “Improving the modelling of HIV transmission”.
On top of the publications made by others, Johnson is using statistical distributions and mathematical formulae in the paper, and he does that without much explanation, suggesting that the audience for the paper are mathematicians or bio-mathematicians who want to expand their knowledge in the …show more content…
Notation seems to be ambiguous, especially with the dot “.”It is not clear what the author meant, although it can be clarified that it is multiplication sign. The entire model looks like it may work, but again the author doesn’t give any specific methods of arriving at the results, nor references, making the reader believe him “on word”. Similar, yet little more complex model is found at Hyman & Stanley,1988 with the equation for the rate of change of infected individuals being the same in both papers. Although it may be assumed that the author was inspired by Hyman’s and Stanley’s paper it is not given anywhere what was the inspiration, what obviously doesn’t give the author much credibility. What author fails to mention, although he might not think it is important, essentially those are Lotka-Volterra (Sternberg, 2009).
Later, author defines a new term, namely “basic reproductive number, R_0 and explains how this number is used in the field of contagious diseases. Importantly the author provides a valid reference. The way in which author calculates the R_0 is correct however somewhat informal, and not clear. More detailed information on the number is found in Jones,
Introduction
The article that is reviewed today is “An introduction to mathematics of HIV/Aids modelling” by Leigh Johnson published in 2004 for Centre of Actuarial Research for University of Cape Town, South Africa.
The article provides an introduction to modelling HIV/Aids transmission as well as survival and focuses on children who lost their parents due to HIV/Aids called orphans. The lack of proper Introduction to the article isn’t easily allowing the reader to understand the purpose of the paper. Reading the first section of the paper, called “Epidemiological Terminology” one is presented with variety of scientific definitions such us Prevalence or Incidence of a disease, hence the very first interpretation …show more content…
Alongside referencing other work through the paper, very often Johnson is sending the reader to the source if one wanted to find out more information for a given topic. Example of such situation is at the end of section “Improving the modelling of HIV transmission” where Johnson is finishing the section with a reference to Garnett and Bowden paper for further information. The main work that Johnson is building his conclusions on is The ASSA 2000 Suite of models. He mentions it at the beginning of section 4, “Improving the modelling of HIV transmission”.
On top of the publications made by others, Johnson is using statistical distributions and mathematical formulae in the paper, and he does that without much explanation, suggesting that the audience for the paper are mathematicians or bio-mathematicians who want to expand their knowledge in the …show more content…
Notation seems to be ambiguous, especially with the dot “.”It is not clear what the author meant, although it can be clarified that it is multiplication sign. The entire model looks like it may work, but again the author doesn’t give any specific methods of arriving at the results, nor references, making the reader believe him “on word”. Similar, yet little more complex model is found at Hyman & Stanley,1988 with the equation for the rate of change of infected individuals being the same in both papers. Although it may be assumed that the author was inspired by Hyman’s and Stanley’s paper it is not given anywhere what was the inspiration, what obviously doesn’t give the author much credibility. What author fails to mention, although he might not think it is important, essentially those are Lotka-Volterra (Sternberg, 2009).
Later, author defines a new term, namely “basic reproductive number, R_0 and explains how this number is used in the field of contagious diseases. Importantly the author provides a valid reference. The way in which author calculates the R_0 is correct however somewhat informal, and not clear. More detailed information on the number is found in Jones,