Measles as a case study in nonlinear forecasting and chaos

This paper uses measles incidence in developed countries as the basis of a case study in nonlinear forecasting and chaos. It uses a combination of epidemiological modelling and nonlinear forecasting to explore a range of issues relating to the predictability of measles before and after the advent of mass vaccination. A comparison of the pre-vaccination self-predictability of measles in England and Wales indicates relatively high predictability of these prodominantly biennial epidemic series, compared to New York City, which shows mixture of one-, two- and three-year epidemics. This analysis also indicates the importance of choosing correct embeddings to avoid bias in prediction. -from Authors