English

Math behind everyday life: "black days", their manifestation as traffic jams, and beyond

Physics and Society 2024-09-12 v3 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

In our daily lives, we encounter numerous independent events, each occurring with varying probabilities over time. This letter delves into the scientific background behind the inhomogeneous distribution of these events over time, often resulting in what we refer to as ``black days'', where multiple events seem to converge at once. In the first part of the work we performed an analysis involving DD independent periodic and random sequences of events. Using the Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) technique, we observed a clustering of event sequences on a two-dimensional manifold M{\cal M} at a certain large DD. We interpret this clustering as a signature of ``black days'', which bears a clear resemblance to traffic jams in vehicle flow. In the second part of the work we examined in detail clustering patterns of independently distributed NN points within the corners of a DD-dimensional cube when 1N<D1\ll N<D. Our findings revealed that a transition to a single-component cluster occurs at a critical dimensionality, DcrD_{cr}, via a nearly third-order phase transition. Analyzing the spectral density, ρ(λ)\rho(\lambda), of the corresponding adjacency graph in the vicinity of the clustering transition we recover the singular ''Lifshitz tail'' behavior at the spectral boundary of ρ(λ)\rho(\lambda).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.19459,
  title  = {Math behind everyday life: "black days", their manifestation as traffic jams, and beyond},
  author = {Daniil Fedotov and Sergei Nechaev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.19459},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

18 pages, 10 figures