Variability measures of positive random variables

KOŠŤÁL, Lubomír; Petr LÁNSKÝ and Ondřej POKORA. Variability measures of positive random variables. PloS ONE. 2011, vol. 6, No 7, p. e21998, 11 pp. ISSN 1932-6203. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021998.

Basic information

Original name

Variability measures of positive random variables

Authors

KOŠŤÁL, Lubomír; Petr LÁNSKÝ and Ondřej POKORA

Edition

PloS ONE, 2011, 1932-6203

---

Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Article in a journal

Field of Study

10103 Statistics and probability

Country of publisher

United States of America

Confidentiality degree

is not subject to a state or trade secret

Impact factor

Impact factor: 4.092

Organization unit

Faculty of Science

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021998

UT WoS

000293097300010

Keywords in English

FISHER INFORMATION; ENTROPY; DISTRIBUTIONS; FREQUENCY; DENSITIES; DISCHARGE; INTERVALS; SUPPORT; NEURONS; SIGNALS

Tags

International impact, Reviewed

---

Abstract

In the original language

During the stationary part of neuronal spiking response, the stimulus can be encoded in the firing rate, but also in the statistical structure of the interspike intervals. We propose and discuss two information-based measures of statistical dispersion of the interspike interval distribution, the entropy-based dispersion and Fisher information-based dispersion. The measures are compared with the frequently used concept of standard deviation. It is shown, that standard deviation is not well suited to quantify some aspects of dispersion that are often expected intuitively, such as the degree of randomness. The proposed dispersion measures are not entirely independent, although each describes the interspike intervals from a different point of view. The new methods are applied to common models of neuronal firing and to both simulated and experimental data.