English

Use the information dimension, not the Hausdorff

Pattern Formation and Solitons 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

Multi-fractal patterns occur widely in nature. In developing new algorithms to determine multi-fractal spectra of experimental data I am lead to the conclusion that generalised dimensions DqD_q of order q0q\leq0, including the Hausdorff dimension, are effectively \emph{irrelevant}. The reason is that these dimensions are extraordinarily sensitive to regions of low density in the multi-fractal data. Instead, one should concentrate attention on generalised dimensions DqD_q for q1q\geq 1, and of these the information dimension D1D_1 seems the most robustly estimated from a finite amount of data.

Cite

@article{arxiv.nlin/0512014,
  title  = {Use the information dimension, not the Hausdorff},
  author = {A. J. Roberts},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:nlin/0512014},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

11 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-22T18:14:40.308Z