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Balance: a thermodynamic perspective

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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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. A P J Abdul Kalam Technological University, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, 695016, India

    Gangan Prathap

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  1. Gangan Prathap
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Correspondence to Gangan Prathap.

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Prathap, G. Balance: a thermodynamic perspective. Scientometrics 119, 247–255 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03020-3

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