During a virulent outbreak of cholera in mid-19th century London, physician John Snow doggedly went from door to door interviewing families of victims and piecing together evidence of disease transmission through contaminated water systems. With his collected data, Snow mapped the location of all deaths. Most were clustered around a water pump in Soho’s Broad Street. Unable to detect the guilty microbe with his microscope, he had identified a pattern that convinced the city council to disable the pump, and that was the end of the epidemic.

Snow’s conviction that human waste was responsible was largely derided by the medical establishment of the time. Most physicians believed in the miasma theory – that diseases were caused by breathing foul air. Snow’s conclusions would ultimately triumph. His studies led to the rise of modern epidemiology, the discovery of germ theory, and the use of statistics to test dispersal theories of natural phenomena.

Mevin Hooten in USU’s department of mathematics and statistics is demonstrating how far the methodology has come in the past 150 years and pushing the boundaries even further. With new equations that maximize the power of computer technology, he and his co-investigators at three universities and the U.S. Geological Survey are tracking the movements of an invasive bird and a deadly virus.

Hooten studied plants as an undergraduate at Kansas State, and branched out from forest ecology to statistics in graduate school at University of Missouri-Columbia, when he realized that certain questions could only be answered with “higher” mathematics and statistics.

As he gazes out the window of his office in Lund Hall to admire the view of the Bear River Mountains, Hooten says, “Science doesn’t get done without statistics.” Statistical modeling, his specialty, lurks behind the scenes, governing nearly every aspect of our lives, from the placement and pricing of products at the grocery store, to the flow of rush-hour traffic and rescue of miners trapped underground. “All the things we take for granted today, somebody, somewhere had to solve a problem mathematically and statistically.”

He switches on his computer. A photo of the view from the top of Logan Peak recalls the scenic highlight of a summer hike. His mouse clicks in staccato fashion, and the photo is replaced by a series of color-coded maps and population-growth graphs created with his co-investigators for a project funded by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Geological Survey.

These tools plot the manifest destiny of the Eurasian-collared dove. Having conquered Europe in less than a century, it is well on its way to triumphing over the New World. The invasion began in Florida after a couple of birds escaped from captivity in the Bahamas. From its stronghold in Florida, the dove launched an assault on the rest of the Gulf. Within a few decades it could achieve the colonization of the entire United States.

The bird has already invaded the Cache Valley and the population is rapidly growing. Since the publication of an article about Hooten’s work in the local Herald Journal, he has been hearing regularly of reported sightings. With few predators to waylay its winged migration or retard its prolific breeding, the Scuzdove, as southerners contemptuously call it, might eventually outcompete native species such as the mourning dove, the most abundant and popular game bird in the United States.

Any diseases it carries might harm native birds but not humans so public health officials regard it as a mere nuisance. But the more it proliferates, the lower its standing in the pecking order established by birders. Its universality, dull color and comical coo-coo-cook lump it in the same Superbird category as the pigeon and starling, mess makers of their urban jungles.

In another project yet to be published, Hooten is tracking rabies in Connecticut raccoons. He switches to another file, and a map of Connecticut opens up on his computer screen. The first few cases reveal themselves in a cluster of black dots, which quickly merge into an expanding black square. Its eastward progression slows as the infested raccoons encounter a river. Suddenly a new dot appears all by itself, miles away from the heart of the infestation. A diseased raccoon has hitched an anonymous ride on a garbage truck and made it past the river, all the way to the coast.

Computer-calculated equations and patterns provide an early-warning system. With this information resource managers and public health officials can assess the situation and factor multiple sources of uncertainty into their decision-making.

Avian viruses mutate and invade humans; species come and go. For all our engineering and oversight, we will never be able to whip the forces of nature into a predictable, stable shape. Estimating the parameters and probabilities eliminates some of the guesswork. “Statistics is not about reducing uncertainty; it’s an honest accounting of uncertainty,” says Hooten, whose profession offers a reality check on the human propensity to leap to fanciful conclusions.
—Mary-Ann Muffoletto ’94MA
—Jane Koerner ’07Att