Skip main navigation

Solving the formula (part two): check your calculations

Watch Professor Jakob Zinsstag explain how to calculate effects of diseases on population of herds and their growth.

After you finish the calculations, it is time to check your results and to interpret them.

Jakob Zinsstag demonstrates how to read the results in the theoretical framework of One Health. With these matrix models, veterinarians calculate the population of animals and estimate how many are lost due to diseases.

For example if you want to know how much a population is growing within a year (eg year 2), you can calculate the growth rate (Eigenvalue) of a population. If the Eigenvalue is less than ‘1’, the total population will decline; if it is higher than ‘1’, it will grow. In our case, the Eigenvalue of year 2 is 1.0635514. This indicates that the population grows with a percentage of 6.36 %.

This article is from the free online

One Health: Connecting Humans, Animals and the Environment

Created by
FutureLearn - Learning For Life

Reach your personal and professional goals

Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.

Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.

Start Learning now