Related papers: Maximizing diversity in biology and beyond
This is a preliminary article stating and proving a new maximum entropy theorem. The entropies that we consider can be used as measures of biodiversity. In that context, the question is: for a given collection of species, which frequency…
We define a one-parameter family of entropies, each assigning a real number to any probability measure on a compact metric space (or, more generally, a compact Hausdorff space with a notion of similarity between points). These entropies…
Entropy measures of probability distributions are widely used measures in ecology, biology, genetics, and in other fields, to quantify species diversity of a community. Unfortunately, entropy-based diversity indices, or diversity indices…
In recent years, biodiversity measures have gained prominence as essential tools for ecological and environmental assessments, particularly in the context of increasingly complex and large-scale datasets. We provide a comprehensive review…
A common statistical situation concerns inferring an unknown distribution Q(x) from a known distribution P(y), where X (dimension n), and Y (dimension m) have a known functional relationship. Most commonly, n<m, and the task is relatively…
In this paper entropy based methods are compared and used to measure structural diversity of an ensemble of 21 classifiers. This measure is mostly applied in ecology, whereby species counts are used as a measure of diversity. The measures…
This book brings new mathematical rigour to the ongoing vigorous debate on how to quantify biological diversity. The question "what is diversity?" has surprising mathematical depth, and breadth too: this book involves parts of mathematics…
In this paper we study the problem of computing max-entropy distributions over a discrete set of objects subject to observed marginals. Interest in such distributions arises due to their applicability in areas such as statistical physics,…
Diversity indices are useful single-number metrics for characterizing a complex distribution of a set of attributes across a population of interest. The utility of these different metrics or sets of metrics depend on the context and…
We consider the problem of estimating the population probability distribution given a finite set of multivariate samples, using the maximum entropy approach. In strict keeping with Jaynes' original definition, our precise formulation of the…
The Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology (METE) is a unified theory of biodiversity that predicts a large number of macroecological patterns using only information on the species richness, total abundance, and total metabolic rate of the…
In most data-scientific approaches, the principle of Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) is used to a posteriori justify some parametric model which has been already chosen based on experience, prior knowledge or computational simplicity. In a…
The consistency of the species abundance distribution across diverse communities has attracted widespread attention. In this paper, I argue that the consistency of pattern arises because diverse ecological mechanisms share a common symmetry…
Recently, the Shannon entropy, which was introduced originally as a measure of information amount, has been widely used as a useful index of various diversities such as biodiversity and geodiversity. In this work we have evaluated the…
This paper shows how to evolve numerically the maximum entropy probability distributions for a given set of constraints, which is a variational calculus problem. An evolutionary algorithm can obtain approximations to some well-known…
Understanding functional diversity, the range and variability of species' roles and actions within their communities, is key to predicting and preserving the functions that sustain both nature and human well-being. In this paper, we provide…
Diversity is a fundamental feature of ecosystems, even when the concept of ecosystem is extended to sociology or economics. Diversity can be intended as the count of different items, animals, or, more generally, interactions. There are two…
The diversity of a community that cannot be fully counted must be inferred. The two preeminent inference methods are the MaxEnt method, which uses information in the form of constraints and Bayes' rule which uses information in the form of…
Quantitative methods for studying biodiversity have been traditionally rooted in the classical theory of finite frequency tables analysis. However, with the help of modern experimental tools, like high throughput sequencing, we now begin to…
The diversity of the symbols of the information source is calculated following the definition that entropy is the information loss and following a new entropy-symbol similarity relation after the rejection of the Gibbs paradox statement.…