Balance: a thermodynamic perspective

Gangan Prathap ()
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Gangan Prathap: A P J Abdul Kalam Technological University

Scientometrics, 2019, vol. 119, issue 1, No 12, 247-255

Abstract: Abstract Balance (or evenness) as used in conventional approaches to measuring diversity needs careful definition. Nijssen et al. (Coenoses 13(1):33–38, 1998) used a mathematical approach to show that the Lorenz curve is an adequate representation of evenness and proposed that the Gini coefficient is a perfect indicator of balance. In this paper, we take an alternative thermodynamic perspective that leads to a very simple dimensionless measure of balance that ranges from 0 (perfect balance or evenness) to 1 (perfect unevenness or absolute concentration). It has the expected permutation invariance, scaling invariance, and replication invariance properties of a good evenness indicator and also has sensitivity to the transfer requirements (i.e. sensing the entropy changes correctly). It also has a naturalness property.

Keywords: Diversity; Gini index; Index of inequality; Balance; Unevenness; Naturalness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-019-03020-3

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