Differential Invariants of Measurements, and Their Relation to Central Moments

Abstract

Due to the principle of minimal information gain, the measurement of points in an affine space V determines a Legendrian submanifold of VxV*xR. Such Legendrian submanifolds are equipped with additional geometric structures that come from the central moments of the underlying probability distributions and are invariant under the action of the group of affine transformations on V. We investigate the action of this group of affine transformations on Legendrian submanifolds of VxV*xR by giving a detailed overview of the structure of the algebra of scalar differential invariants, and we show how the scalar differential invariants can be constructed from the central moments. In the end, we view the results in the context of equilibrium thermodynamics of gases, and notice that the heat capacity is one of the differential invariants.