Sample and population exponents of generalized Taylor's law

DOI10.1073/PNAS.1505882112MaRDI QIDQ2962286zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Andrea Giometto, Marco Formentin, A. Rinaldo, Joel E. Cohen, Amos Maritan

Publication date 16 February 2017

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.5026

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Probability distributions: general theory (60E05) Large deviations (60F10) Applications of statistics to environmental and related topics (62P12)

Abstract: Taylor's law (TL) states that the variance $V$ of a non-negative random variable is a power function of its mean $M$, i.e. $V=a{M}^b$. The ubiquitous empirical verification of TL, typically displaying sample exponents $bsimeq2$, suggests a context-independent mechanism. However, theoretical studies of population dynamics predict a broad range of values of $b$. Here, we explain this apparent contradiction by using large deviations theory to derive a generalized TL in terms of sample and populations exponents $b_{jk}$ for the scaling of the $k$-th vs the $j$-th cumulant (conventional TL is recovered for $b=b_{12}$), with the sample exponent found to depend predictably on the number of observed samples. Thus, for finite numbers of observations one observes sample exponents $b_{jk}simeqk/j$ (thus $bsimeq2$) independently of population exponents. Empirical analyses on two datasets support our theoretical results.

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Cites work

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• Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and the growth-rate theorem
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