Example of a model for a function

  • Context: High School 
  • Thread starter Thread starter Ssnow
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Mathematical modelling
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
6 replies · 2K views
Messages
586
Reaction score
188
TL;DR
I want to ask if somebody know a practical example of phenomena that is modelled by the math function cited in the post.
Hi!!
There is some natural phenomena (finalcial or other field ... ) that is modelled by the following real function (of a similar function less then a constant): $$y=f(x)=x^{\frac{2}{x}}$$

or
$$y=x^{\frac{k}{x}}, \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \forall k\in\mathbb{R}$$

thanks,
Ssnow
 
Mathematics news on Phys.org
Many optimization problems in business engineering and science exhibit the behavior described by this function

They start with a fixed quantity and ask for the optimal configuration. Program threads come to mind in parallel programming, where each thread processes a chunk of data. If the chunks are too big, i.e. ie few threads, you might notice that splitting the chunk in two and doubling the thread count improves parallelism and they all terminate sooner.

So then you try smaller and smaller chunks and more threads, but the parallelism vanishes, and it takes longer to process the tiny chunks because each thread has overhead, and more threads mean more memory traffic, which slows things down.

—-

At first I thought this function might relate to the ultraviolet catastrophe in blackbody radiation, since both involve a rise to a peak followed by a decline. However, the comparison does not hold.

In blackbody radiation, the spectrum rises roughly as a power of frequency at low frequencies and then falls off exponentially at high frequencies due to quantum effects introduced from the light quanta introduced by Max Planck.

In contrast, the function x^{2/x} reaches a maximum because increasing the number of terms reduces their individual contribution. Its decay is algebraic rather than exponential.
 
Last edited:
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Ssnow
Observing the form of the graph the clearly association is an event that change very fast in a short time, like an explosion ... I don't know probably in chemistry ...
Ssnow
 
Ssnow said:
TL;DR: I want to ask if somebody know a practical example of phenomena that is modelled by the math function cited in the post.
I'm unaware of practical examples of your function:$$f_{k}\left(x\right)\equiv x^{k/x}$$but a transformation of that function:$$\log\left(f_{k}\left(u^{-1}\right)\right)=-k\,u\log u$$with the specific value ##k=-1## is quite common:
Stirling's Approximation:$$\log n!\approx n\log n-n=\log\left(f_{-1}\left(n^{-1}\right)\right)-n$$Shannon Entropy:$$H\equiv-\sum_{i}p_{i}\log p_{i}=-\sum_{i}\log\left(f_{-1}\left(p_{i}^{-1}\right)\right)$$Optimal Asymptotic Complexity of a Sorting Algorithm:$$\mathcal{O}\left(n\log n\right)=\mathcal{O}\left(\log\left(f_{-1}\left(n^{-1}\right)\right)\right)$$
 
Reply
  • Like
  • Informative
Likes   Reactions: Ssnow, jedishrfu and berkeman