Related papers: Quantifying the Unexpected: a scientific approach …
We propose a framework for studying predictability of extreme events in complex systems. Major conceptual elements -- hierarchical structure, spatial dynamics, and external driving -- are combined in a classical branching diffusion with…
By comparing Schr\"odinger's cat with its classical counterpart, I show that a quantum superposition should be understood as an expectation over possible eigenstates weighted by wave-like probabilities. Upon the occurrence of a certain…
The prediction and control of rare events is an important task in disciplines that range from physics and biology, to economics and social science. The Big Jump principle deals with a peculiar aspect of the mechanism that drives rare…
In this paper the Zipf-Mandelbrot law is revisited in the context of linguistics. Despite its widespread popularity the Zipf--Mandelbrot law can only describe the statistical behaviour of a rather restricted fraction of the total number of…
We study rare events in the extreme value statistics of stochastic symmetric jump processes with power tails in the distributions of the jumps, using the big-jump principle. The principle states that in the presence of stochastic processes…
The scattering structures in the ISM responsible for so-called ``extreme scattering events" (ESEs), observed in quasars and pulsars, remain enigmatic. Current models struggle to explain the high-frequency light curves of ESEs, and a recent…
The processes that generate rogue waves on the sea surface remain a mystery. Despite their different natures, the nonlinear bending waves generated in a thin elastic plate share some similarities with waves on the surface of the sea. For…
We study Lorentz processes in two different settings. Both cases are characterized by infinite expectation of the free-flight times, contrary to what happens in the classical Gallavotti-Spohn models. Under a suitable Boltzmann-Grad type…
Solar flares and CMEs have a broad range of magnitudes. This review discusses the possibility of "extreme events," defined as those with magnitudes greater than have been seen in the existing historical record. For most quantitative…
Globally disruptive events include asteroid/comet impacts, large igneous provinces and glaciations, all of which have been considered as contributors to mass extinctions. Understanding the overall relationship between the timings of the…
In the last years, researchers have realized the difficulties of fitting power-law distributions properly. These difficulties are higher in Zipf's systems, due to the discreteness of the variables and to the existence of two representations…
Quantifying and predicting rare and extreme events persists as a crucial yet challenging task in understanding complex dynamical systems. Many practical challenges arise from the infrequency and severity of these events, including the…
Quantities with right-skewed distributions are ubiquitous in complex social systems, including political conflict, economics and social networks, and these systems sometimes produce extremely large events. For instance, the 9/11 terrorist…
Recognition of anomalous events is a challenging but critical task in many scientific and industrial fields, especially when the properties of anomalies are unknown. In this paper, we introduce a new anomaly concept called "unicorn" or…
Emergence is a pregnant property in various fields. It is the fact for a phenomenon to appear surprisingly and to be such that it seems at first sight that it is not possible to predict its apparition. That is the reason why it has often…
Apparently random events in nature often reveal hidden patterns when analysed using diverse and robust statistical tools. Power-law distributions, for example, project diverse natural phenomenon, ranging from earthquakes1 to heartbeat…
We discuss various types of exotic (non-standard) singularities in the Universe: a Big-Rip (BR or type I), a Sudden Future Singularity (SFS or type II), a Generalized Sudden Future Singularity, a Finite Scale Factor singularity (FSF or type…
Statistical laws describe regular patterns observed in diverse scientific domains, ranging from the magnitude of earthquakes (Gutenberg-Richter law) and metabolic rates in organisms (Kleiber's law), to the frequency distribution of words in…
We introduce the following discrete time model. Each natural number represents an ecological niche and is assigned a fitness in $(0,1)$. All the sites are updated simultaneously at every discrete time. At any given time the environment may…
It turns out that some empirical facts in Big Data are the effects of properties of large numbers. Zipf's law 'noise' is an example of such an artefact. We expose several properties of the power law distributions and of similar distribution…