Gintropy

This book is an experiment in the genre of textbooks: mathematical formulas related to entropy, distributions, and inequality measures like the Gini index are embedded into a fictious story about seven scientists, meeting, and acting according to their respective characters in an imaginary project. The embedding of formulas inside the story is, however, lifted by putting all formulas into the last chapter, so that the story can be read through. This is done for the sake of those who would not or could not follow university level math.

Still, as a novelty, the pdf file contains hypertext jumps to and back from the corresponding formulas. In the printed version, unfortunately, only the page number could have been indicated where to continue (or not) the reading.

The story is about (economical, wealth and social) inequality, and about the utopistic and distopic dream of treating equally persons with varying social and economical status. The mathematical models and notions behind are introductory to the area of statistics, statistical pyhsics, econophysics and quantitaive finance.

This book, as a novel mixture of a fiction and a theoretical textbook, may prove to be a chimera, but perhaps also a new dynamit for the intellectual considerations about how to measure, model and manipulate inequality in our societies. As said, an experiment.