[Population Modeling] Population modeling definition

[Jacob Barhak]

Hello All,

There is a growing demand to define the term population modeling. This need
is visible in some recent personal communications.

This post will try to bring some quotes from different people who try to
define it during conversation. I intend to use some of this in the paper,
so I am bringing it to the list first to get opinions of more people.

So here are key quotes:

Sergey Nuzhdin USC:

"we are doing lots of population / quantitative modeling, and i would love
to get engaged in human community;

but so far, our efforts have been in Drosophila and plants"

John Rice - Society for Simulation in Heathcare (SSiH)  government
relations vice chair:

"Sergey,  perfect!  I want to learn about PopMod for non human sciences and
engineer applications.  If we had a population of trees in a forrest,  in
stead of a generalized collective description. Could we predict the course
of a forrest fire better?  Only beginning to think about that, then here
you are, modeling a populations of  plants."

Sergey replying:
" you are right, John, precisely what we are doing (among other things);

how to predict collective properties from individual ones;

there is plenty done about it when the subjects are homogeneous, and very
little when heterogeneous;"

Madhav Marathe - Virginia Tech:
"The population modeling group is intended to be broad. Ofcourse making it
way too broad might make it harder for a cohesive conversation but we can
see how it plays out. I am calling this population of things; it appears
things is the best word I can use to keep the intended generality. We have
studied cells, wireless devices, people and animals in the past for
instance."

It seems that the above discussion matches the ad hoc definition we reached
at the IMAG meeting at the NIH:

"Modeling a collection of entities with different levels of heterogeneity"

We reached this definition quickly and it was a broad consensus.
However, others on the list may want to discuss this definition and offer
alternatives.

For example Markov models address populations mostly as time series and
seldom consider differences between individual entities,  yet I would still
include Markov models under the umbrella of population modeling. It is a
difficult fit to the above definition unless hetrogeneity among states is
considered within time.

I would appreciate your thoughts and will try to incorporate those in the
paper.

          Jacob
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