Variational principle underlying scale invariant social systems

MaxEnt's variational principle, in conjunction with Shannon's logarithmic information measure, yields only exponential functional forms in straightforward fashion. In this communication we show how to overcome this limitation via the incorporation, into the variational process, of suitable...

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Autores principales: Hernando, A., Plastino, Ángel Luis
Formato: Articulo Preprint
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: 2012
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Acceso en línea:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/95704
https://ri.conicet.gov.ar/11336/74368
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140%2Fepjb%2Fe2012-30313-x
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Sumario:MaxEnt's variational principle, in conjunction with Shannon's logarithmic information measure, yields only exponential functional forms in straightforward fashion. In this communication we show how to overcome this limitation via the incorporation, into the variational process, of suitable dynamical information. As a consequence, we are able to formulate a somewhat generalized Shannonian maximum entropy approach which provides a unifying "thermodynamic-like" explanation for the scale-invariant phenomena observed in social contexts, as city-population distributions. We confirm the MaxEnt predictions by means of numerical experiments with random walkers, and compare them with some empirical data.