Entropy and Diversity: The Axiomatic Approach

Understand

This book brings new mathematical rigour to the ongoing vigorous debate on how to quantify biological diversity.

• The question "what is diversity?" has surprising mathematical depth, and breadth too: this book involves parts of mathematics ranging from information theory, functional equations and probability theory to category theory, geometric measure theory and number theory.
• It applies the power of the axiomatic method to a biological problem of pressing concern, but the new concepts and theorems are also motivated from a purely mathematical perspective.
• The main narrative thread requires no more than an undergraduate course in analysis.