A suite of allotaxonometric tools for the comparison of complex systems using rank-turbulence divergence
This provides incremental tools for researchers in data science and complex systems analysis to visualize and compare distributions.
The authors tackled the problem of comparing complex systems by developing a suite of programmatic tools for rendering allotaxonographs, which are visual comparisons of heavy-tailed distributions using rank-turbulence divergence, implemented in Matlab, Javascript, and Python.
Describing and comparing complex systems requires principled, theoretically grounded tools. Built around the phenomenon of type turbulence, allotaxonographs provide map-and-list visual comparisons of pairs of heavy-tailed distributions. Allotaxonographs are designed to accommodate a wide range of instruments including rank- and probability-turbulence divergences, Jenson-Shannon divergence, and generalized entropy divergences. Here, we describe a suite of programmatic tools for rendering allotaxonographs for rank-turbulence divergence in Matlab, Javascript, and Python, all of which have different use cases.