In her TED talk, Emily Oster challenges our conception of AIDS and suggests other covariates that we need to look at (e.g. export volumes of coffee). Until we get out of the mindset that poverty and health care are the only causes/predictors of AIDS, we won’t be able to find the best way to fight the disease. Another great use of data.
I do have one small itch to scratch though. Emily had a line plot that shows export volumes and another line, on the same grid, of HIV infections, both over time. It reminds me of the plots that Al Gore uses with carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Anyways, using the plot, Emily suggests a very tight relationship between export volumes and HIV infections. Isn’t export volume pretty tightly knit to poverty? I don’t know. She’s the economist, so she would know (A LOT) better than me. I guess I just wish she talked a little bit about the new and different data she has that compels us to change our conceptions.
