1. Introduction
The Gini mean difference (GMD) is a prominent measure that is used extensively in economics. Let $X$ be a non-negative random variable with absolutely continuous distribution function $F$ and finite mean $\mu$, and $X_1$ and $X_2$ be two independent random variables from $F$. Then, the GMD is defined as
For more details on GMD and other measures derived from it, interested readers may refer to Yitzhaki and Schechtman [Reference Yitzhaki and Schechtman33].
The right-truncated version of the GMD has also been discussed for examining inequality between the poor and affluent groups, while the left-truncated version has found application in reliability analysis. For more details, see Nair et al. [Reference Nair, Sankaran and Vineshkumar21] and Behdani et al. [Reference Behdani, Mohtashami Borzadaran and Sadeghpour Gildeh5]. Recently, Nair and Vineshkumar [Reference Nair and Vineshkumar22] discussed some relationships between the cumulative past entropy and income gap ratio, Lorenz curve, Gini index, Bonferroni curve and Zenga curve.
In many practical situations, measuring the uncertainty associated with a random variable is quite important, and many measures have been introduced for this purpose. The seminal work on information theory started with the concept of Shannon entropy or differential entropy introduced by Shannon [Reference Shannon26]. Since then, different measures of entropy have been discussed, each one being suitable for some specific situation. Some of the widely used measures of entropy are cumulative residual entropy [Reference Rao, Chen, Vemuri and Wang24], cumulative past entropy [Reference Di Crescenzo and Longobardi12], the corresponding weighed measures by Mirali et al. [Reference Mirali, Baratpour and Fakoor19] and Mirali and Baratpour [Reference Mirali and Baratpour18], and a general measure of cumulative residual entropy [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29].
One important generalization of Shannon entropy is due to Tsallis [Reference Tsallis31], known as generalized Tsallis entropy of order $\alpha$. Many extensions and modifications have been developed for it as well. For example, Rajesh and Sunoj [Reference Rajesh and Sunoj23] proposed cumulative residual Tsallis entropy of order $\alpha$, while Chakraborty and Pradhan [Reference Chakraborty and Pradhan7] defined weighted cumulative residual Tsallis entropy (WCRTE) of order $\alpha$ and its dynamic version. Calì et al. [Reference Calì, Longobardi and Ahmadi6] introduced cumulative past Tsallis entropy of order $\alpha$. Chakraborty and Pradhan [Reference Chakraborty and Pradhan8] introduced weighted cumulative past Tsallis entropy (WCTE) of order $\alpha$, and also studied its dynamic version.
An alternative measure of uncertainty, called extropy, was introduced by Lad et al. [Reference Lad, Sanfilippo and Agro16] as a complementary dual of entropy. Jahanshahi et al. [Reference Jahanshahi, Zarei and Khammar14] and Tahmasebi and Toomaj [Reference Tahmasebi and Toomaj30] studied cumulative residual extropy and negative cumulative extropy, while Balakrishnan et al. [Reference Balakrishnan, Buono and Longobardi4] and Chakraborty and Pradhan [Reference Chakraborty and Pradhan9] discussed different weighted versions of extropy. Sudheesh and Sreedevi [Reference Sudheesh and Sreedevi28] established some relationships between different extropy measures and reliability concepts, and Sudheesh et al. [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29] established some relationships between entropy and extropy measures.
The probability weighted moments (PWMs) generalize the concept of moments of a probability distribution, and they have been used effectively for estimating the parameters of different distributions. The PWM was introduced by Greenwood et al. [Reference Greenwood, Landwehr, Matalas and Wallis13]. Here, we show that extropy measures mentioned above can be expressed in terms of PWM.
The rest of this article is organized as follows. In Section 2, using a generalized cumulative residual entropy, we derive connections between some entropy measures and GMD. In Section 3, we establish some relationships between GMD and extropy measures. In Section 4, we show that several extropy measures can be brought into the framework of PWM. Finally, we make some concluding remarks in Section 5.
2. Connection between entropy and GMD
Let $X$ be a non-negative random variable with absolute continuous distribution function $F$ and let $\bar {F}(x)=P(X \gt x)$ denote the survival function. Let us further assume that the mean $\mu =E(X) \lt \infty$.
2.1. Cumulative residual entropy and GMD
We now consider the generalized cumulative residual entropy measure introduced recently by Sudheesh et al. [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29].
Definition 1. Let $X$ be a non-negative random variable with absolute continuous distribution function $F$. Furthermore, let $\phi (\cdot)$ be a function of $X$ and $w(\cdot )$ be a weight function. Then, the generalized cumulative residual entropy is defined as
Sudheesh et al. [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29] showed that several measures of entropy available in the literature can be deduced from (1) with different choices of $w(\cdot )$ and $\phi (\cdot )$. In particular, for the choice of $w(u) = 1$ and $\phi (x) = x$, (1) reduces to the cumulative residual entropy [Reference Asadi and Zohrevand3].
We now show that GMD is a special case of $\mathcal {GE}(X)$.
Theorem 1. For the choice of $w(u)=\bar {F}(u)$ and $\phi (x)=2x$, $\mathcal {GE}(X)={\rm GMD}$.
Proof. Let $X_1$ and $X_2$ be independent and identical random variables having the distribution function $F$. With ${\rm GMD}=E|X_1-X_2|$, and because $|X_1-X_2|=\max (X_1,X_2)-\min (X_1,X_2)$, the GMD can alternatively be expressed as
Now, for the choice of $w(u)=\bar {F}(u)$ and $\phi (x)=2x$, the expression in (1) becomes
which is precisely the GMD.
Remark 1. In general, for the choices of $w(u)=\bar {F}(u)$ and $\phi (x)=2x^v$ for some positive integer $v$, we have
Also, for $w(x)=\bar {F}^{k-1}(u)$, $k=2,3,\ldots$ and $\phi (x)=kx^v$, $v =1,2,\ldots$, we get
In the particular case of $v=1$, we have
where $EG_k(X)$ and $EG_k(-X)$ are the risk-premium and the gain-premium of $X$ of order $k$, respectively. These two quantities have found key applications in bid and ask prices in finance; see Agouram and Lakhnati [Reference Agouram and Lakhnati2]. The above expression can alternatively be expressed as
In particular, when $k=2$, we obtain
which is yet another representation of GMD [Reference Lerman and Yitzhaki17].
2.2. Generalized cumulative past entropy and GMD
We now consider the generalized cumulative past entropy and discuss its relationship with GMD.
Definition 2. [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29]
Let $X$ be a non-negative random variable with absolute continuous distribution function $F$. Furthermore, let $\phi (\cdot )$ be a function of $X$ and $w(\cdot )$ be a weight function. Then, the generalized cumulative past entropy is defined as
In particular, for the choice of $w(u)=1$ and $\phi (x)=x$, (2) reduces to $\mathcal {CE} (X)$ [Reference Di Crescenzo and Longobardi12].
Theorem 2. For the choice of $w(u)=F(u)$ and $\phi (x)=x$, $\mathcal {GCE}(X)$ reduces to the GMD.
Proof. Consider
as required.
Furthermore, for the choice of $w(u)=F^k(u)$ and $\phi (x)=(k+1)x$, where $k$ is a positive integer, we have
We now show that GMD is a special case of the cumulative residual Tsallis entropy of order $\alpha$ defined by Rajesh and Sunoj [Reference Rajesh and Sunoj23] as
For $\alpha =2$, the above expression becomes
For a non-negative random variable $X$, we have $\mu =E(X)=\int _{0}^{\infty }\bar F(x)\,dx$. Noting that $\bar F^{2}(x)$ is the survival function of $\min (X_1,X_2)$, we simply obtain
Now, because $|X_1-X_2|=X_1+X_2-2\min (X_1,X_2)$, we obtain ${\rm GMD}=2 {\rm CRT}_{2}(X)$.
3. Connection between extropy and GMD
Tahmasebi and Toomaj [Reference Tahmasebi and Toomaj30] discussed a relationship between GMD and cumulative past extropy. Now upon using the generalized entropy measures introduced by Sudheesh et al. [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29], we establish here some relationships between different dynamic extropy measures and the right- and left-truncated GMD.
First, we express the GMD in terms of cumulative residual extropy and cumulative past extropy. For a non-negative random variable $X$, Jahanshahi et al. [Reference Jahanshahi, Zarei and Khammar14] defined the cumulative residual extropy as
while the cumulative past extropy is defined as Tahmasebi and Toomaj [Reference Tahmasebi and Toomaj30]
Various applications of $\mathcal {CRJ}(X)$ and $\mathcal {CJ}(X)$ have been discussed by Jahanshahi et al. [Reference Jahanshahi, Zarei and Khammar14] and Tahmasebi and Toomaj [Reference Tahmasebi and Toomaj30].
Using the survival functions of $\max (X_1,X_2)$ and $\min (X_1,X_2)$, we easily find that
Sudheesh and Sreedevi [Reference Sudheesh and Sreedevi28] discussed the non-parametric estimation of $\mathcal {CRJ}(X)$ and $\mathcal {CJ}(X)$ for right censored data, and so using the above relationship, we can readily obtain an estimator of the GMD based on right censored data.
Sathar and Nair [Reference Sathar and Nair25] defined dynamic survival extropy as
while Kundu [Reference Kundu15] introduced dynamic cumulative extropy as
Sudheesh and Sreedevi [Reference Sudheesh and Sreedevi28] proposed simple alternative expressions for different extropy measures, and then used them to establish some relationships between different dynamic and weighted extropy measures and reliability concepts.
The left-truncated GMD is given by
while the right-truncated GMD is defined as
Theorem 3. Let $m(x)=E(X-x\,|\,X \gt x)$ and $r(x)=E(x-X\,|\,X\le x)$. Then, the relationships between the GMD and the dynamic survival extropy and/or the dynamic cumulative extropy are
(i)
(5) \begin{equation} {\rm GMD}_L=m(x)+2J_t(X), \end{equation}(ii)
(6) \begin{equation} {\rm GMD}_R={-}2H_t(x)-r(x). \end{equation}
Proof. Consider the left-truncated GMD given by
Sudheesh and Sreedevi [Reference Sudheesh and Sreedevi28] expressed $J_t(X)$ in (4) as
Substituting (8) in (7), we obtain the relationship in (5).
Next, consider the right-truncated GMD given by
After some algebraic manipulations, we obtain from (9) that
Sudheesh and Sreedevi [Reference Sudheesh and Sreedevi28] expressed $H_t(X)$ as
Substituting (11) in (10), we obtain the relationship in (6).
Theorem 4. Let $X_1$ and $X_2$ be two independent and identical random variables having distribution function $F$, and $Z=\min (X_1,X_2)$ be the lifetime of a series system comprising two components. Then, the generalized residual entropy associated with $Z$ is the weighted average of the difference between the left-truncated GMD and the mean residual life.
Proof. Using (1), we define the generalized residual entropy associated with $Z$ as
where $\phi (\cdot )$ is a function of $Z$ and $w(\cdot )$ is a weight function. Now, for the choice of $w(u)=-\frac {1}{2}$ and $\phi (z)=z$, from (12), we obtain
Theorem 5. Let $X_1$ and $X_2$ be two independent and identical random variables having distribution function $F$, and $Z=\max (X_1,X_2)$ be the lifetime of a parallel system comprising two components. Then, the generalized cumulative past entropy associated with $Z$ is the weighted average of the sum of the right-truncated GMD and the mean past life.
Proof. The generalized cumulative past entropy associated with $Z$ is defined as
Again, for the choice of $w(u)=\frac {1}{2}$ and $\phi (z)=z$, from (13), we obtain
So, the generalized cumulative past entropy associated with $Z$ is the weighted average of sum of the right-truncated GMD and the mean past life.
4. Connections with PWMs
We now show that many of the measures discussed in the preceding sections can be represented in terms of PWM.
The PWM of a random variable $X$ with distribution function $F$ is defined as [Reference Greenwood, Landwehr, Matalas and Wallis13]
where $p$, $r$ and $s$ are any real numbers, for which the involved expectation exists.
First, we consider the GMD and related measures. From the proof of Theorem 1, we can express GMD as
and so we have
which, when compared with (14), yields
Several income inequality measures are derived from the GMD by choosing different weights in the expectation and one among them is the S-Gini family of indices [Reference Yitzhaki and Schechtman33]. The absolute S-Gini index is defined as
which can be rewritten as
Hence, the absolute S-Gini index can be represented as
For $v=2$, $S_v$ reduces to GMD and hence GMD can also be represented in terms of PWM as
Next, we consider different extropy measures. The cumulative past extropy and the weighted cumulative past extropy of $X$ can be expressed as [Reference Sudheesh and Sreedevi28]
Observing that $2F(x)f(x)$ is the density function of $\max (X_1,X_2)$, the extropy measures given above can be rewritten as
so that
The cumulative residual entropy and the weighted cumulative residual entropy of $X$ can be expressed as [Reference Sudheesh and Sreedevi28]
Here again, we observe that $2\bar {F}(x)f(x)$ is the density function of $\min (X_1,X_2)$, and so
from which we readily obtain
Next, we show that the cumulative residual Tsallis entropy of order $\alpha$ can be written in terms of PWM. Let us assume that $\alpha$ is a positive integer with $\alpha \ne 1$. Recall that
We can show that
and so we can write from (15) that
which yields
For a non-negative continuous random variable $X$, the weighted cumulative residual Tsallis entropy (WCRTE) of order $\alpha$ is defined as [Reference Chakraborty and Pradhan7]
After some simple algebra, we can show that
so that
from which we readily obtain
Calì et al. [Reference Calì, Longobardi and Ahmadi6] introduced the cumulative past Tsallis entropy of $X$ as
while Chakraborty and Pradhan [Reference Chakraborty and Pradhan8] defined the weighted cumulative past Tsallis entropy (WCTE) of order $\alpha$ as
As in the case of CRTE and WCRTE, we obtain
Aaberge [Reference Aaberge1] introduced a family of inequality measures based on the moments of the Lorenz curve as
We note that $D_k(F)$ can be expressed in term of cumulative past Tsallis entropy as $CT_{k+1}(X)/\mu$. Hence, we can express
Sharma and Taneja [Reference Sharma and Taneja27] and Mittal [Reference Mittal20] independently introduced the STM entropy of $X$ as
Some entropy measures discussed in the literature can be derived from (16) by making different choices for $\alpha$ and $\beta$.
Sudheesh et al. [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29] introduced a cumulative residual STM entropy of $X$ as
and the cumulative past STM entropy of $X$ as
They also introduced weighted versions of these measures as
and
Sudheesh et al. [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29] showed that $SR_{\alpha,\beta }$ and $SRW_{\alpha,\beta }$ are special cases of (1), while $SP_{\alpha,\beta }$ and $SPW_{\alpha,\beta }$ are special cases of (2).
We now express these measures in terms of PWM as follows, presented without proofs, for the sake of conciseness:
These representations in terms of PWM would enable us to develop inferential methods for all these measures using the known results on PWM.
5. Concluding remarks
The GMD is a well-known measure of dispersion that is used extensively in economics. We have established here some relationships between the information measures and the GMD. We have shown that the GMD is a special case of the generalized cumulative residual entropy proposed recently by Sudheesh et al. [Reference Sudheesh, Sreedevi and Balakrishnan29]. We have also established some relationships between the GMD and extropy measures. We have further presented some relationships between the dynamic versions of the cumulative residual/past extropy and the truncated GMD.
The PWMs generalize the concept of moments of a probability distribution. The estimates derived using PWMs are often superior than the standard moment-based estimates. For discussion on different methods of estimation of the PWM, we refer to David and Nagaraja [Reference David and Nagaraja10], Vexler et al. [Reference Vexler, Zou and Hutson32] and Deepesh et al. [Reference Deepesh, Sudheesh and Sreelakshmi11] and the references therein. We have shown here that many of the information measures can be expressed in terms of PWM, which would facilitate the development of inferential methods for these measures using the well-known results on PWM.
Acknowledgments
Our Sincere thanks go to the Editor-in-Chief and the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions on our earlier version of this manuscript which led to this improved version.