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A Power-Law-Based Approach to Mapping COVID-19 Cases in the United States
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: Received: 21 July 2020 / Approved: 25 July 2020 / Online: 25 July 2020 (11:48:05 CEST)
How to cite: Jiang, B.; de Rijke, C. A Power-Law-Based Approach to Mapping COVID-19 Cases in the United States. Preprints 2020, 2020070607 Jiang, B.; de Rijke, C. A Power-Law-Based Approach to Mapping COVID-19 Cases in the United States. Preprints 2020, 2020070607
Abstract
This paper examines the spatial and temporal distribution of all COVID-19 cases from January to June 2020 against the underlying distribution of population in the United States. It is found that, as time passes, COVID-19 cases become a power law with cut-off, resembling the underlying spatial distribution of populations. The power law implies that many states and counties have a low number of cases, while only a few highly populated states and counties have a high number of cases. To further differentiate patterns between the underlying populations and COVID-19 cases, we derived their inherent hierarchy characterized by the ht-index. We found that the ht-index of COVID-19 cases persistently approaches that of the populations; that is, 5 and 7 at the state and county levels, respectively. Mapping the ht-index of COVID-19 cases against that of populations provides new insights into the development of the pandemic in the United States.
Keywords
Power laws; head/tail breaks; hierarchy; ht-index; COVID-19
Subject
Social Sciences, Law
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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