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In mathematics and statistics, a quantitative variable may be continuous or discrete if it is typically obtained by measuring or counting, respectively. [1] If it can take on two particular real values such that it can also take on all real values between them (including values that are arbitrarily or infinitesimally close together), the variable is continuous in that interval. [2]
Many of the concepts in information theory have separate definitions and formulas for continuous and discrete cases. For example, entropy is usually defined for discrete random variables, whereas for continuous random variables the related concept of differential entropy, written (), is used (see Cover and Thomas, 2006, chapter 8).
Dichotomization is the special case of discretization in which the number of discrete classes is 2, which can approximate a continuous variable as a binary variable (creating a dichotomy for modeling purposes, as in binary classification). Discretization is also related to discrete mathematics, and is an important component of granular computing.
Unlike a continuous-time signal, a discrete-time signal is not a function of a continuous argument; however, it may have been obtained by sampling from a continuous-time signal. When a discrete-time signal is obtained by sampling a sequence at uniformly spaced times, it has an associated sampling rate.
A finite difference is a mathematical expression of the form f (x + b) − f (x + a).If a finite difference is divided by b − a, one gets a difference quotient.The approximation of derivatives by finite differences plays a central role in finite difference methods for the numerical solution of differential equations, especially boundary value problems.
The total variation distance (or half the norm) arises as the optimal transportation cost, when the cost function is (,) =, that is, ‖ ‖ = (,) = {(): =, =} = [], where the expectation is taken with respect to the probability measure on the space where (,) lives, and the infimum is taken over all such with marginals and , respectively.
The term discrete-time refers to the fact that the transform operates on discrete data, often samples whose interval has units of time. From uniformly spaced samples it produces a function of frequency that is a periodic summation of the continuous Fourier transform of the original continuous function.
The method is based on finite differences where the differentiation operators exhibit summation-by-parts properties. Typically, these operators consist of differentiation matrices with central difference stencils in the interior with carefully chosen one-sided boundary stencils designed to mimic integration-by-parts in the discrete setting.