Extreme physical information (
EPI) is a principle, first described and formulated in 1998 by
B. Roy Frieden, Emeritus Professor of Optical Sciences at the
University of Arizona, that states, the precipitation of scientific laws can be derived through
Fisher information, taking the form of
differential equations and
probability distribution functions.
Introduction
Physicist
John Archibald Wheeler stated that:
All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe... Observer participancy gives rise to information; and information gives rise to physics. By using
Fisher information, in particular the loss
I -
J incurred during observation, the EPI principle provides a powerful new approach for deriving laws governing many aspects of nature and human society. EPI can be seen as an extension of
information theory that encompasses much theoretical
physics and
chemistry. Examples include the
Schrödinger wave equation and the
Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law. EPI has been used to derive a number of fundamental laws of
physics ,
biology, the
biophysics of
cancer growth ,
chemistry, and
economics . EPI can also be seen as a
game against nature, first proposed by
Charles S. Peirce. The approach does require prior knowledge of an appropriate invariance principle or data.
EPI principle
The EPI principle builds on the well known idea that the observation of a "source" phenomenon is never completely accurate. That is, information present in the source is inevitably lost when observing the source. Moreover, the random errors that contaminate the observations are presumed to define the probability distribution function of the source phenomenon. That is, "the physics lies in the fluctuations." The information loss is postulated to be an extreme value. Thus, if the Fisher information in the data is , and the Fisher information in the source is , the EPI principle states that:
mathcal{I}
-
mathcal{J}
=
mathrm {Extremum}
The extremum for most situations is a minimum, meaning that there is a comforting tendency for any observation to describe its source faithfully.
References
- Frieden, B.R - Fisher information as the basis for the Schrödinger wave equation, Am. J. Physics 57, 1004-1008, 1989
- Frieden, B.R - Fisher information, disorder, and the equilibrium distributions of physics, Phys. Rev. A 41, 4265-4276, 1990
- Frieden, B.R - Estimation of distribution laws, and physical laws, by a principle of extremized physical information, Physica A 198, 262-338, 1993
- Frieden, B.R - Physics from Fisher Information, Mathematics Today 37, 115-119, 2001
- Frieden, B.R. & Gatenby, R.A. - Power laws of complex systems from extreme physical information, Phys. Rev. E 72, 036101, 2005
- Frieden, B.R. & Soffer, B.H. - Information-theoretic significance of the Wigner distribution, Phys. Rev. A, to be published 2006
Books
- Frieden, B. Roy - Physics from Fisher Information: A Unification , 1st Ed. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-63167-X, pp328, 1998
- Frieden, B. Roy - Science from Fisher Information: A Unification , 2nd Ed. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-00911-1, pp502, 2004
- Frieden, B.R. & Gatenby, R.A. eds. - Exploratory Data Analysis Using Fisher Information, Springer-Verlag (in press), pp358, 2006
Recent papers using EPI
- Gatenby, Robert A. & Frieden, B. Roy - "Application of Information Theory and Extreme Physical Information to Carcinogenesis",
- Cancer Research 62, 3675-3684, July 1, 2002
- http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/62/13/3675
- Chimento,L.P. & Pennini, F. & Plastino, A. - “Naudts-like duality and the Extreme Fisher information principle”,
- Phs. Rev. E 62, 7462-7465, 2000
- http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v62/i5/p7462_1subj: statistical mechanics
- Nagy, A. - “Fisher information in density functional theory,”, J. Chem. Phys. 119, 9401-9405, 2003
- http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JCPSA6000119000018009401000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
- Subj: The Euler equation of density functional theory is derived using EPI.
- Anton, M. & Weisen, H. & Dutch, M.J. - “X-ray tomography on the TCV tokamak”,
- Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 38, 1849-1878, 1996
- http://ej.iop.org/links/q80/fVFo+Bx3KRlwd6qcdU2Saw/p61101.pdf
- Mlynar, J. & Bertalot, L. - “Neutron spectra unfolding with minimum Fisher regularization”
- http://pos.sissa.it/archive/conferences/025/063/FNDA2006_063.pdf
- Subj: Diagnosis of plasma shape within the tokamak fusion machine using reconstructions based upon EPI.
- Venkatesan, Ravi. - “Information encryption using a Fisher-Schrödinger Model”,
- Presented at 6th International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS) June, 2006
- Boston, MA Full paper is in Frieden and Gatenby, 2006
- http://necsi.org/community/wiki/index.php/ICCS06/235
- Subj: Encryption, secure transmission using EPI, in particular game aspect.
- Fath B.D. & Cabezas, H. & CW Pawlowski - “Exergy and Fisher information as ecological indices”,
- Ecological Modeling 174, 25-35, 2004 - CW 2003
- http://zp9vv3zm2k.scholar.serialssolutions.com/sid=google&auinit=BD&aulast=Fath&atitle=Exergy+and+Fisher+Information+as+ecological+indices&id=doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2003.12.045
- Subj: monitoring of the environment for species diversity
- Yolles. M.I. - “Knowledge Cybernetics: A New Metaphor for Social Collectives”, 2005
- http://isce.edu/ISCE_Group_Site/web-content/ISCE%20Events/Christchurch_2005/Papers/Yolles.pdf
- Subj: Information-based approaches to knowledge management.
- Venkatesan, R.C. - “Invariant Extreme Physical Information and Fuzzy Clustering”, Proc. SPIE Symposium on Defense & Security,
- Intelligent Computing: Theory and Applications II, Priddy, K. L. ed, Volume 5421, pp. 48-57, Orlando, FL, 2004
- http://spiedl.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=PSISDG005421000001000048000001&idtype=cvips&prog=normal
- Ménard, Michel. & Eboueya, Michel. - "Extreme physical information and objective function in fuzzy clustering",
- Fuzzy Sets and Systems 128(3): 285-303, 2002
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6V05-45SR1TJ-1-1&_cdi=5637&_user=56761&_orig=na&_coverDate=06%2F162F2002&_sk=998719996&view=c&wchp=dGLbVlz-zSkWb&md5=4280259595b947a7b560f634f47de5c4&ie=/sdarticle.pdf
- Ménard,Michel. & Dardignac, Pierre-André. & Chibelushi, Claude C. - "Non-extensive thermostatistics and
- extreme physical information for fuzzy clustering (invited paper)", IJCC, 2 (4): 1-63, 2004
- http://www.yangsky.us/ijcc/pdf/ijcc241.pdf
See also
External links