Ideas: past (unfinished), current and future projects

I’ve got a headful of ideas that are driving me insane … (Bob Dylan, Maggie’s Farm)

These are all ideas that have floated through my head at one time or another that would be interesting to work on but that I simply haven’t gotten around to. Some of them could be appropriate for thesis (undergraduate, Master’s, Ph.D …) projects. Please contact me if any of them strikes you as interesting.

Epidemics

Functional responses

Variance dynamics/autocorrelated growth

Related: Brooks, McCoy, and Bolker (2013)

Evolution of virulence

Related: Bolker, Nanda, and Shah (2010)

Common principal components

Related: McCoy et al. (2006)

Spatial/phylogenetic (G)LM(M)s

Related: flexLambda branch of lme4

General-purpose MLE software

General population dynamics

Mixed models

General spatial dynamics

Dispersal

Misc.

(as though this whole list couldn’t be lumped under “miscellaneous” …)

More unfinished projects/ideas

This is an embarrassingly long list of projects I’ve worked on over the years that could be revisited. They’re either unpublished or unfinished/want to be revisited or both.

Software

Lots …

Aldebert, Clement, and Daniel B. Stouffer. 2018. “Community Dynamics and Sensitivity to Model Structure: Towards a Probabilistic View of Process-Based Model Predictions.” Journal of The Royal Society Interface 15 (149): 20180741. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0741.
Bolker, Benjamin M., Arjun Nanda, and Dharmini Shah. 2010. “Transient Virulence of Emerging Pathogens.” J. Roy Soc. Interface 7 (46): 811–22. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2009.0384.
Brooks, Mollie E., Michael W. McCoy, and Benjamin M. Bolker. 2013. “A Method for Detecting Positive Growth Autocorrelation Without Marking Individuals.” PLoS ONE 8 (10): e76389. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076389.
Campbell, Harlan, Perry de Valpine, Lauren Maxwell, Valentijn MT de Jong, Thomas Debray, Thomas Jänisch, and Paul Gustafson. 2021. “Bayesian Adjustment for Preferential Testing in Estimating the COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rate.” arXiv:2005.08459 [Stat], March. http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.08459.
Das, Ujjwal, Subhra Sankar Dhar, and Vivek Pradhan. 2018. “Corrected Likelihood-Ratio Tests in Logistic Regression Using Small-Sample Data.” Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods 47 (17): 4272–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/03610926.2017.1373815.
Dormann, Carsten F., Jana M. McPherson, Miguel B. Araújo, Roger Bivand, Janine Bolliger, Gudrun Carl, Richard G. Davies, et al. 2007. “Methods to Account for Spatial Autocorrelation in the Analysis of Species Distributional Data: A Review.” Ecography 30 (5): 609–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2007.0906-7590.05171.x.
Eastman, Brydon. 2017. “Sensitivity to Predator Response Functions in the Chemostat.” Thesis. https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/22231.
Ives, A. R., and H. C. J. Godfray. 2006. “Phylogenetic Analysis of Trophic Associations.” The American Naturalist 168 (1): 1–14.
Keitt, Timothy H. 2002. “Accounting for Spatial Pattern When Modeling Organism-Environment Interactions.” Ecography 25 (5): 616–25. http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/09067590/v25i0005/616_afspwmoi.xml.
McCoy, Michael W., Benjamin M. Bolker, Craig W. Osenberg, Benjamin G. Miner, and James R. Vonesh. 2006. “Size Correction: Comparing Morphological Traits Among Populations and Environments.” Oecologia 148: 547–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-006-0403-6.
Seabloom, Eric, Ottar Bjørnstad, Benjamin Bolker, and Omar J. Reichman. 2005. “The Spatial Signature of Environmental Heterogeneity, Dispersal, and Competition in Successional Grasslands.” Ecological Monographs 75 (2): 199–214.
Seo, Gunog, and Gail S. K. Wolkowicz. 2018. “Sensitivity of the Dynamics of the General RosenzweigMacArthur Model to the Mathematical Form of the Functional Response: A Bifurcation Theory Approach.” Journal of Mathematical Biology 76 (7): 1873–1906. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00285-017-1201-y.
Wand, M. P., and J. T. Ormerod. 2011. “Penalized Wavelets: Embedding Wavelets into Semiparametric Regression.” Electronic Journal of Statistics 5 (none). https://doi.org/10.1214/11-EJS652.
Zhang, Hui, Naiji Lu, Chanyong Feng, Sally W. Thurston, Yinglin Xia, Liang Zhu, and Xin M Tu. 2011. “On Fitting Generalized Linear Mixed-Effects Models for Binary Responses Using Different Statistical Packages.” Statistics in Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.4265.

References