Entropy in Ecology and Ethology [Hardcover]

Radu Cornel Guiasu (Author), Silviu Guiasu (Author)

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Product details

Hardcover: 330 pages
Publisher: Nova Biomedical (17 Oct 2003)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1590337433
ISBN-13: 978-1590337431
Product Dimensions: 25.8 x 18.4 x 2.6 cm
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,624,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

This book is the result of a collaboration between a biologist and a mathematician. In recent years, different mathematical methods have been used more and more extensively in biology, beyond the applications of common statistical tests that are routinely employed in biological studies. In ecology, for instance, many new measures of diversity have been proposed and used in applications. Some of them are simply proposals without a solid mathematical justification and motivation. Furthermore, when there are too many measures of the same concept, the relationship between these different measures can be confusing. The book deals with the entropic measures of uncertainty, diversity, and interdependence. After all these years, the Shannon entropy, introduced in 1948 as the discrete analogue of Boltzmann's famous H-function from statistical mechanics, has remained the only measure of the amount of uncertainty contained by a probabilistic experiment which not only has all the properties expected from such a measure, but also satisfies a uniqueness theorem proving that its mathematical expression is the only one for which these basic properties hold. More recently, other useful measures, such as the relative or conditional entropy, weighted entropy, and the entropic measure of inner and global connection and interdependence, have been derived from ingenious combinations, extensions, and generalizations of Shannon's absolute discrete entropy. This book combines a rigorous mathematical approach to these entropic measures and their applications to the fields of ecology and ethology with a presentation accessible to readers who are not mathematicians. Those who lack a mathematical background may skip the more detailed justifications of the mathematical statements and formulas. The main concepts and algorithms, however, are meant for all readers interested in using these mathematical tools in ecology and ethology.

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