2017/05/10 by Blake C. Stacey, Stacey, Blake C.
Computer Science · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Data Analysis #FOS: Physical sciences #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an) #Topological and Geometric Data Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1705.03927
openalex publication_date 2017/05/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In earlier work, my colleagues and I developed a formalism for using information theory to understand scales of organization and structure in multi-component systems. One prominent theme of that work was that the structure of a system cannot always be decomposed into pairwise relationships. In this brief communication, I refine that formalism to address recent examples which bring out that theme in a novel and subtle way. After summarizing key points of earlier papers, I introduce the crucial new concept of an ancilla component, and I apply this refinement of our formalism to illustrative examples. The goals of this brief communication are, first, to show how a simple scheme for constructing ancillae can be useful in bringing out subtleties of structure, and second, to compare this scheme with another recent proposal in the same genre.