kindsamounts

Kindsamounts is a term used in data analysis and related disciplines to describe the joint measurement of diversity and abundance within a dataset. It captures not only how many distinct kinds are present, but also how those kinds are distributed in terms of frequency or count.

A typical formulation of kindsamounts involves two components: kind richness and abundance distribution. The richness component, K, is the number of unique kinds observed in the sample. The abundance component describes how evenly the counts are spread across those kinds and can be summarized by an evenness or diversity index, such as Shannon entropy or Pielou’s evenness. A common practice is to report both K and an evenness value E, where E is calculated from the relative frequencies of the kinds (for example, p_i is the proportion of the total attributed to kind i, and H' = -sum p_i log p_i; E = H'/log K).

Example: in a sample with three kinds A, B, and C having counts 50, 30, and 20, the richness K is 3. The proportions are 0.50, 0.30, and 0.20, giving H' ≈ 1.03 and E ≈ 0.94 when using natural logs. This indicates high richness with relatively even distribution.

Applications of kindsamounts appear in ecology, linguistics, market research, and information science, where it is useful to report both the number of kinds and the distribution of their abundances. Limitations include sensitivity to sample size and the need for clear interpretation when comparing datasets with different sampling efforts.