1: Interpolated Marlov Chain (IMaCh program)
2:
3: This program will be licensed under the GNU GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
4:
5: The program estimates Health Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal
6: studies.
7: The main publication is Lievre, A. Brouard. N, Heathcote
8: Ch. Estimating Health Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal surveys,
9: Mathematical Population Studies, 10(1), 2003, pp. 1-52.
10:
11: To be brief, for each people interviewed we need the age and health
12: status at each interview. Also the month and year of death should be
13: known as for birth. We model the probability to be observed in any
14: state at any age via a parametric model and estimate the parameters
15: and their confidence interval by maximum likelihood. Many tables and
16: graphs are output in HTML. Graphs are built using gnuplot.
17:
18: First versions appeared around year 2000. Currently (September 2015)
19: version 0.98q5 can run on any Unix, including OS/X and on Windows 10
20: (64bit) as well as Windows XP (32bit).
21:
22: Binaries are usually provided for OS/X (DMG for 64bit), Linux (rpm)
23: and Windows installer (32 and 64bit).
24:
25:
26: STRUCTURE of the binary
27:
28: IMaCh is a command line program (no time for a GUI) which means that
29: it can be run on a shell by $ imach foo.imach where foo.imach is your
30: 'parameter' file which is a simple text file with a few lines that
31: your must edit in order to describe your data as well as your model
32: line. In this parameter file you give the name and path of your data
33: file which is also a text file.
34:
35: Even if it is command line program, most operating systems offer
36: simplifications of use:
37:
38: - On Windows, you can click on the imach.exe
39: icon (which opens a DOS window) and drag your parameter file into the
40: DOS windows and enter return. But with the newly installable version
41: (>0.97) you can use the right click (once your mouse cursor is on an
42: foo.imach file) to either edit the parameter file (with wordpad) or
43: execute this parameter file via imach. At the end of the run, your are
44: asked to enter a character and the terminal will not disappear.
45:
46: - On OSX, you can click on the IMaCh application and terminal will be
47: open: either type in the name and path of your parameter file or
48: drag it from the finder.
49:
50: The output of you run is a lot of text files which are grouped into a
51: sub-directory having the name of your parameter file as well as an
52: other text file foo.gp which is a gnuplot file. This gnuplot is run by
53: imach and creates a lot of graphs from the various results text files.
54: An other important file named foo.htm can be opened by your browser
55: and it will display various hyperlinks to most of your results as well
56: as your graphs.
57:
58: You can edit this file, customize it at your will and run it to get
59: additional figures or modified figures to be published. Just click on
60: gnuplot.exe and type "load foo.gp" for example.
61:
62: Gnuplot is a well known grapher under the GPL license too. As it is
63: changing often, the OS/X and Windows installers are providing binaries
64: for gnuplot 2.6.5.
65:
66: Since the era of 64bit processors and their wide use on OS/X and
67: Windows 7, 8 or 10, we discovered that our usual GNU compiler were not
68: efficient on Windows 64 and current binaries are compiled with the
69: Intel C compiler. On OS/X the native LLVM C compiler from Apple is
70: very efficient too.
71:
72: Usually IMaCh binaries are distributed under two subdirectories, 'bin' for the
73: binaries which are imach.exe and gnuplot.exe and 'html' for some of the
74: documentation, and 'mytry' in order to test the program on a parameter
75: file named 'mypar.imach'.
76:
77: By default the file 'gnuplot.exe' is located on the same directory as
78: imach and is used by imach with its absolute path. Thus, if you have
79: another gnuplot program which is already in your path it will not be used by
80: imach (we tried to simplify the installation process).
81:
82: If you download a newer version of IMaCh, you are supposed to Uninstall the
83: former version with the standard Install/Uninstall process of Windows.
84:
85: Enjoy (?) using IMaCh.
86:
87: You may subscribe to imach-users@listes.ined.fr by sending a mail at
88: imach-users-subscribe@listes.ined.fr and you can unsubscribe with a
89: mail to imach-users-unsubscribe@listes.ined.fr .
90:
91: Other comments are included on the Wiki server
92: http://euroreves.ined.fr/imach/wiki, please use it ask questions too.
93:
94: Nicolas Brouard (brouard at ined point fr)
95: Institut national d'études démographiques
96: 133 Boulevard Davout
97: 75014 Paris
98:
99: Earlier versions were also written by
100: Agnès Lièvre (former PHD student at INED)
101: Christopher Heathcote (ANU)
102:
103:
104:
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