Ranking earthquake forecasts using proper scoring rules: Binary events in a low probability environment

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Probabilistic earthquake forecasts can be used to estimate the chance of future earthquake hazards, or to model important risk quantities including the number of fatalities, damaged elements of infrastructure or economic losses. The Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) is a global community initiative seeking to make research on earthquake forecasting more open and rigorous, pursuing these ends by comparing different forecasts in a competitive setting and basing judgements of accuracy and usefulness on objective grounds. Read more

Measuring Unfair Inequality: Reconciling Equality of Opportunity and Freedom from Poverty

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Over the past few decades, rising income inequality has spurred debates around the world. While many call for policies to help redistribute wealth and counter inequality, others argue that inequality is actually necessary to both motivate and reward hard work and economic productivity. But, as LML Fellow Ravi Kanbur and colleagues argue in a recent paper, standard measures of inequality don’t offer a useful basis for this debate over fairness. Read more

Inference on the History of a Randomly Growing Tree

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The skeletal outlines of many natural processes resemble growing tree-like networks. Examples include the movement of a disease through a human community, news or rumours through social media or a computer virus through a web of connected computers. The elements in these networks correspond to nodes in the tree, and links or edges between nodes reflect some kind of connection between individuals – Read more