About the Authors

Ming-Wen An

mian@vassar.edu

Affiliations Department of Mathematics, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, United States of America, Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Nicholas G. Reich

Affiliations Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Stephen O. Crawford

Current address: WellPoint, Columbia, Maryland, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Ron Brookmeyer

Affiliation Department of Biostatistics, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Thomas A. Louis

Affiliation Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Kenrad E. Nelson

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Competing Interests

S.O. Crawford is employed by WellPoint. This affiliation neither affected the work in this submission (which was done while Crawford was a student at Johns Hopkins) nor does it alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: M-WA NGR SOC RB TAL KEN. Analyzed the data: M-WA NGR SOC. Wrote the paper: M-WA NGR SOC RB TAL KEN. Developed/programmed the simulator: M-WA.