title: The workings of the maximum entropy principle in collective human behaviour.
abstract: We present an exhaustive study of the rank-distribution of city-population and population-dynamics of the 50 Spanish provinces (more than 8000 municipalities) in a time-window of 15 years (1996-2010). We exhibit compelling evidence regarding how well the MaxEnt principle describes the equilibrium distributions. We show that the microscopic dynamics that governs population growth is the deciding factor that originates the observed macroscopic distributions. The connection between microscopic dynamics and macroscopic distributions is unravelled via MaxEnt.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Collisions, Agrégats, Réactivité, IRSAMC, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 Route de Narbonne, Toulouse Cedex 09, France. alberto.hernando@irsamc.ups-tlse.fr
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hernando
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hernando
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Plastino
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Plastino
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012919:Social Behavior; D013030:Spain; D014505:Urban Population