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Dr. Douglas G. Frank is the scientist/mathematician behind this blog.

Dr. Douglas G. Frank

Dr. Frank received a B.A. in Chemistry from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He qualified for his doctorate at the University of California, Santa Barbara before transferring to the University of Cincinnati in 1986 as part of the Ohio Eminent Scholar program. In 1990, he received a Ph.D. in Surface Analytical Chemistry. After graduating, he formed “ADAM Instrument Company, Inc.,” named for the new surface analysis technique he discovered during his graduate studies. The “ADAM” technique brought him international acclaim, and his work was featured in several scientific books and international journals, including cover articles in Science and Naturwissenschaften. He has over 50 scientific publications, and is internationally regarded as an expert in Auger spectroscopy.

Dr. Frank currently serves as the Math and Science Chair at the Schilling School for Gifted Children in Cincinnati, OH. He is also the President of Precision Analytical Instruments.

All words below this line are compiled from Dr. Frank. Other than ordering and organizing the comments and the charts, we (DPH) have not edited any of his comments because that would be out of our area of expertise. The comments were given in a social media context, so they have a friendly, conversational tone.

For State graphs, click the state below:

Each state is updated daily, or as often as Dr. Frank supplies an updated chart.

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California. Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois
Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri
Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota. Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont. Virginia. Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Latest World and USA Model:

(Note: Click on the heading to get a page of past charts for that heading)

Covid-19 “Big US Model Update”

Here is a background document on Fermi Calculations that will enhance the comments below
Download (PDF, 86KB)

March 29:

Update 2:

Any Doubt? (been plotting this for completeness, you can compare it with my earlier graphs, before NY was an issue) (If you look carefully at the shape, you can recognize the peak for New York superimposed on my peak for the rest of the country I’ve added a second graph to illustrate this)

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Update 1:

The international update should be completed any minute. The reason this is important is because if the peak is today, it means that the “BIG USA Reported Cases Model” nailed this.

You are going to need to be able to tell people in simple words what we have accomplished. My wife just asked me, and here was my reply:

“I just predicted the peak in reported Covid-19 cases in the USA by completing one of the largest Fermi calculations of my life.”

That’s why I put the “Fermi Calculations” document up. Y’all should read it. Then you will understand better, and be able to explain it to some degree to your friends. (**I also came up with a short description in a later post.

I often tell my students that they don’t truly understand something unless they can explain it to their parents in the car, or their second grade sibling. So let me give that a crack:

“Dr Frank did a massive calculation in order to predict the day when the Covid-19 epidemic would be at its worst in the USA. He put the prediction in public weeks in advance, and showed a bunch of people his progress throughout the whole process. Lots of people learned lots of science and math, it was a ton of fun, and many people stopped being afraid of the epidemic. Hundreds of people from around the country chipped in (even from other countries), providing him data and helping him to manage the process online.”

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