Related papers: A concise proof of Benford's law
We give an algorithm A which assigns probabilities to logical sentences. For any simple infinite sequence of sentences whose truth-values appear indistinguishable from a biased coin that outputs "true" with probability p, we have that the…
A classical problem of statistical inference is the valid specification of a model that can account for the statistical dependencies between observations when the true structure is dense, intractable, or unknown. To address this problem, a…
Zipf's law, which states that the probability of an observation is inversely proportional to its rank, has been observed in many domains. While there are models that explain Zipf's law in each of them, those explanations are typically…
Zipf's law is shown to arise as the variational solution of a problem formulated in Fisher's terms. An appropriate minimization process involving Fisher information and scale-invariance yields this universal rank distribution. As an example…
Zipf's law in its basic incarnation is an empirical probability distribution governing the frequency of usage of words in a language. As Terence Tao recently remarked, it still lacks a convincing and satisfactory mathematical explanation.…
The probability distribution function for an out of equilibrium system may sometimes be approximated by a physically motivated "trial" distribution. A particularly interesting case is when a driven system (e.g., active matter) is…
This paper presents an extensive survey of regular distributions in natural and social sciences. The survey includes studies from a wide scope of academic disciplines, in order to create an inventory of the different mathematical functions…
In applied probability, the normal approximation is often used for the distribution of data with assumed additive structure. This tradition is based on the central limit theorem for sums of (independent) random variables. However, it is…
We give simple proofs, under minimal hypotheses, of the Weak Law of Large Numbers and the Central Limit Theorem for independent identically distributed random variables. These proofs use only the elementary calculus, together with the most…
We give a simple statistical proof of a binomial identity, by evaluating the Laplace transform of the maximum of n independent exponential random variables in two different ways. As a by product, we obtain a simple proof of an interesting…
We review briefly the concepts underlying complex systems and probability distributions. The later are often taken as the first quantitative characteristics of complex systems, allowing one to detect the possible occurrence of regularities…
Nonextensive statistics, characterized by a nonextensive parameter $q$, is a promising and practically useful generalization of the Boltzmann statistics to describe power-law behaviors from physical and social observations. We here explore…
Let $\lambda(n)$ denote the exponent of the multiplicative group modulo $n$. We show that when $q$ is odd, each coprime residue class modulo $q$ is hit equally often by $\lambda(n)$ as $n$ varies. Under the stronger assumption that…
The Zipf's law is the major regularity of statistical linguistics that served as a prototype for rank-frequency relations and scaling laws in natural sciences. Here we show that the Zipf's law -- together with its applicability for a single…
According to the Born rule, the probability density in quantum theory is determined by the square of the wave function. A generally accepted derivation of this rule has not yet been proposed. In the given work, a simple physical picture is…
A hypothesis is put forward regarding the function $\pi_2(x)$ which describes the distribution of twin primes in the set of natural numbers. The function $\pi_2(x)$ is tested by evaluation and an empirical $\pi_2^{\ast}(x)$ is arrived at,…
Unfolding problems often arise in the context of statistical data analysis. Such problematics occur when the probability distribution of a physical quantity is to be measured, but it is randomized (smeared) by some well understood process,…
We show that the frequency distribution of the first significant digits of the numbers in the data sets generated from a large class of measures of quantum correlations, which are either entanglement measures, or belong to the…
We consider the joint distribution of real and imaginary parts of eigenvalues of random matrices with independent entries with mean zero and unit variance. We prove the convergence of this distribution to the uniform distribution on the…
Starting from microcanonical basis with the principle of equal a priori probability, it is found that, besides ordinary Boltzmann-Gibbs theory with the exponential distribution, a theory describing systems with power-law distributions can…