Nonextensive statistics and incomplete information

Qiuping A. Wang

Published 2001-07-03, updated 2002-02-14Version 5

We comment on some open questions and theoretical peculiarities in Tsallis nonextensive statistical mechanics. It is shown that the theoretical basis of the successful Tsallis' generalized exponential distribution shows some worrying properties with the conventional normalization and the escort probability. These theoretical difficulties may be avoided by introducing an so called incomplete normalization allowing to deduce Tsallis' generalized distribution in a more convincing and consistent way.