Week 1 - Introduction

Monday 10:00 - 10:50

A general introduction lecture. Topics to cover:

• Course structure
• Topics
• Teachers and tutors
• Lecture notes and reading
• Coursework

Tuesday 09:00 - 10:50

Play the epidemiology activity.

• Open with the question: “Imagine if one day a student came in sick with a nasty infectious disease. How long would it take for that disease to spread through the whole university?” What factors effect this? Try to get answers such as:

  • Number of students
  • Probability of transmitting disease (how? cough? touch? sexually? how do these effect probability?)
  • Recovery rate

• The game:

  • Each student is given a dice.

  • Each student can either be Susceptible (remain seated), Infected (stood up) or Recovered (at the back of the room). Start the game with all students Susceptible, except 1, who is Infected.

  • Each round:

    • Each Infected student interacts with every Susceptible student. An interaction consists of both student rolling their dice. If the combined score is 11 or 12 then the Susceptible student becomes Infected (they do not interact with anyone else this round).
    • After these interactions each Infected student (except newly infected students) roll their die twice. If the total of the two rolls is 5, they become Recovered.
    • Repeat until everyone is Recovered (or too much time has passed).
    • Discuss randomness, probabilities.

  • After each round, record in a table the number of Susceptible, Infected and Recovered students. The table may look like this:

    Round	Susceptible	Infected	Recovered
    0	29	1	0
    1	26	4	0
    2	24	5	1

• After playing the game, type numbers into the epidemiology spreadsheet. Look at graphs. Discuss data visualisation, mean values, etc. Discuss ‘what if’’s and play around with the spreadsheet, e.g.

  • What is the disease was more infectious?
  • What if infected people were put into quarantine for a period of time?
  • What if contact rate was different?