Interpolated Marlov Chain (IMaCh program)

This program is GPL licensed for the part the code that we wrote at
INED. But currently (version 0.97b may 2004) maximization routines use
a modified version of the patented routines from "Numerical Recipes in
C". If you have the right to use the sources of their software you can
get access to the source code and to the CVS tree of IMaCh.

The program estimates Health Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal
studies.
The main publication is Lievre, A. Brouard. N, Heathcote
Ch. Estimating Health Expectancies from Corss-longitudinal surveys,
Mathematical Population Studies, 10(1), 2003, pp. 1-52.

To be brief, for each people interviewed we have the age and health
states at each interview. Also the month of death is known. We model
the probability to be observed in any state at any age via a
parametric model and estimate the parameters and their confidence interval
by maximum likelihood, many tables and graphs are output in
HTML. Graphs are built using gnuplot.

In the Windows version, gnuplot is also distributed. Version 4 is out
since early 2004 and is used by latest version of Imach (at least
version 0.38i is required).
IMaCh is supposed to work on Linux, MacIntosh and Windows (9X or
NT/XP).

WINDOWS
On Windows it is distributed via a setup file (no more a zip file). As
usual you can put the 'imach' directory in Program Files or
wherever. The directory contains at least 2 directories, 'bin' for the
binaries which are imach.exe and gnuplot.exe, doc for some of the
documentation, and 'mytry' in order to test the program on a parameter
file name 'mypar.imach'.

You still can click on the imach.exe icon (which opens a DOS window)
and drag your parameter file into the DOS windows and enter
return. But with the newly installable version (>0.97) you can use the right
click (once your mouse cursor is on an foo.imach file) to either edit the
parameter file (with wordpad) or execute this parameter file via
imach.
If the program runs well you get a main foo.htm file which can be viewed
with your browser and which includes all the results.

As the program output a file named foo.gp which is executed by gnuplot
in order to draw all the graphs, you can edit it and customize it at
your will.

By default the file gnuplot.exe is located on the same directory as
imach and is used by imach with its absolute path. Thus if you have
another gnuplot program which is in your path it will not be used by
imach (we tried to simplify the installation process).

If you download a newer version of IMaCh you are supposed to Uninstall the
former version with the standard Install/Uninstall process of Windows.

The Windows version is compiled via cygwin (gcc -mno-cygwin -o imach
imach.c). It can be used on a command line with the command "imach
foo.imach". But then imach.exe must be in your path. 
The program can be used (with more comfort?) on Linux or on a
MacIntosh.

Enjoy (?) using IMaCh.

You may subscribe to imach-users@listes.ined.fr by sending a mail at
imach-users-subscribe@listes.ined.fr and you can unsubscribe with a
mail to imach-users-unsubscribe@listes.ined.fr .

Nicolas Brouard (brouard at ined point fr)
Agnès Lièvre (lievre chez ined dot fr)
Christopher Heathcote