English

A General Formula for the Generation Time

Populations and Evolution 2018-03-20 v3

Abstract

We show that the generation time -- a notion usually described in a biological context -- can be defined in a general way as a return time in a conveniently constructed finite Markov chain. The simple formula we obtain agrees with previous results derived for structured populations projected in discrete time, and allows to define the generation time of any process described by a weighted directed graph whose matrix is primitive.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1307.6692,
  title  = {A General Formula for the Generation Time},
  author = {François Bienvenu and Lloyd Demetrius and Stéphane Legendre},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.6692},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

13 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:57:41.597Z