Approximate entropy

In statistics, an approximate entropy (ApEn) is a technique used to quantify the amount of regularity and the unpredictability of fluctuations over time-series data. For example, consider two series of data: Series A: (0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, ...), which alternates 0 and 1. Series B: (0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, ...), which has either a value of 0 or 1, chosen randomly, each with probability 1/2. Moment statistics, such as mean and variance, will not distinguish between these two series. Nor will rank order statistics distinguish between these series. Yet series A is perfectly regular: knowing a term has the value of 1 enables one to predict with certainty that the next term will have the value of 0. In contrast, series B is randomly valued: knowing a term has the value of 1 gives no insight into what value the next term will have. Regularity was originally measured by exact regularity statistics, which has mainly centered on various entropy measures. However, accurate entropy calculation requires vast amounts of data, and the results will be greatly influenced by system noise, therefore it is not practical to apply these methods to experimental data. ApEn was developed by Steve M. Pincus to handle these limitations by modifying an exact regularity statistic, Kolmogorov–Sinai entropy. ApEn was initially developed to analyze medical data, such as heart rate, and later spread its applications in finance, physiology, human factors engineering, and climate sciences. A comprehensive step-by-step tutorial with an explanation of the theoretical foundations of Approximate Entropy is available. The algorithm is: Step 1 Assume a time series of data . These are raw data values from measurements equally spaced in time. Step 2 Let be a positive integer, with , which represents the length of a run of data (essentially a window).Let be a positive real number, which specifies a filtering level.Let . Step 3 Define for each where . In other words, is an -dimensional vector that contains the run of data starting with .