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Interpolated Marlov Chain (IMaCh program)

This program is GPL licensed for the part the code that we wrote at
INED. But currently (version 0.98b January 2006) 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 Cross-longitudinal surveys,
Mathematical Population Studies, 10(1), 2003, pp. 1-52.

To be brief, for each people interviewed we need the age and health
status at each interview. Also the month and year of death should be
known as for birth.  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 of
gnuplot is out since early 2004 and is used by latest version of Imach
(at least version 0.38i of gnuplot is required).  IMaCh is supposed to work on
Linux, Unix, MacIntosh (Panther, Tiger) 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 file (foo.htm) which can be viewed
with your browser and which includes all the results.

The program outputs a file named foo.gp which is executed by gnuplot
in order to draw all the graphs. You can edit this file, customize it
at your will and run it to get additional figures or modified figures
tu be published. Jusrt click on gnuplot.exe and type "load foo.gp" for example.

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 already 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 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 .

Other comments are included on the Wiki server
http://euroreves.ined.fr/imach/wiki, please use it ask questions too.

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