Dealing with corona virus: Jone Uria sings an equation

March 30, 2020 1:31 PM

KN+1 − KN = KN.E.p

The Basque-language newspaper Berria has been posting a series of videos recorded at home by local musicians and authors to their YouTube channel. This morning (March 30) they uploaded a video by Jone Uria Albizuri singing about a mathematical formula used to model the spread of infectious diseases and how we can change some of the variables. Jone Uria is a bertsolari, a performer of traditional Basque improvised sung poetry. She also has a degree in mathematics.

I mostly love this because I've never heard anybody sing a mathematical formula before. It takes her several stanzas, with explanations of the variables.

(A short bio of Jone Uria). (Basque improvised poetry, previously.)

posted by nangar (9 comments total)

As far as the formula goes, I get that KN means "the total number of people infected on the Nth day", but after that, she's mostly lost me. (My comprehension of Basque is limited.) If somebody recognizes the formula and can link to an explanation in English, I'd really appreciate it.
posted by nangar at 1:43 PM on March 30, 2020

I believe it's the equation for infectives from the discrete SIR model (in the upper righthand box in the still from the video, the eqn. with a lot of capital-I).

I haven't figured out what got recast into the E p term, because there should be the variable representing susceptible hosts. Possibly this is for the early stages in which the susceptible hosts are practically unlimited? ... that doesn't make sense to me either.
posted by clew at 3:22 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

This morning (April 30)

Damn. I really HAVE lost track of time in isolation...
posted by miguelcervantes at 3:55 PM on March 30, 2020

Jone Uria may have selected letters for some of the variables for their mnemonic value for Basque speakers, or she may be following a text that uses them this way.

K for kutsatu, "infected"
E for egunero, "per day" (?)
p for probability (same root as English and Spanish)

But like I said, I'm not following this well at all. It makes sense, though, that it would correspond to an equation that uses capital I a lot.

My math background is limited to algebra and and undergrad statistics. My Basque is also really basic. I'm not up to following rhymed math lessons. I just think it's really neat that she did this.
posted by nangar at 5:52 PM on March 30, 2020

Mod note: Minor edit to update the month name to March
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:08 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I can't understand either the math or Basque, but I am loving this. Near the end the visuals next to her switch to graphs, which I found easier to follow than the equations.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:44 PM on March 30, 2020

The thing about the E p term that doesn't fit my story is that there should be a subscript in it -- it would be E_N, perhaps. The number of Infecteds tomorrow depends (quite a lot!) on the number of Susceptibles today.

But anyhow, I am delighted by bertsolari and !of course! the mathematics important to the day should be in one. Thanks.
posted by clew at 8:47 PM on March 30, 2020

I absolutely love this, thank you for sharing it.
posted by biogeo at 7:14 AM on March 31, 2020

Facepalm! She’s showing exponential growth, which only makes sense if you think of the potentially infected population as unlimited.

The early stages of the SIR model are very close to that, when there are lots of new people for the infection to jump to.
posted by clew at 4:19 PM on March 31, 2020 [1 favorite]