Budget Distribution Library

Welcome to the Budget Distribution Library! This repository provides a Python module designed to address the problem of distributing a budget over multiple time intervals using two different allocation strategies: linear and exponential.

Introduction

One of the fundamental challenges in financial planning and resource allocation is how to distribute a limited budget effectively across various time intervals. This library offers solutions to this problem by implementing two distinct distribution methods:

Linear Distribution: This method allocates the budget evenly across all time intervals, with no preference for any specific period.
Exponential Distribution: In contrast, exponential distribution allocates the budget in a non-linear fashion, favoring either early or later time intervals based on a specified parameter.

Usage

The distributions.py module provides functions to calculate budget allocations using both linear and exponential distribution methods. Users can specify the total budget, the number of time intervals, and the allocation parameter (P) to customize the distribution according to their needs.

Common Parameters

P (float): The parameter defining the allocation strategy steepness (between -1 and 1).
total_budget (float): The total budget to be distributed.
n_intervals (int): The number of time intervals over which the budget is distributed.

In addition, the distributions_visualization.ipynb Jupyter notebook offers visualizations to help users understand how changing the parameter P affects the distribution of the budget over time intervals.

Example

import distributions

# Example usage
total_budget = 2400
n_intervals = 12
P = 0.5

# Distribute budget using linear weights
interval_budgets = distributions.distribute_budget_linear(P, total_budget, n_intervals)
print("Linear distribution:", interval_budgets)
# output:  [370, 339, 308, 277, 247, 216, 184, 153, 123, 92, 61, 30]

# Distribute budget using exponential weights
interval_budgets = distributions.distribute_budget_exponential(P, total_budget, n_intervals)
print("Exponential distribution:", interval_budgets)
# output:  [1201, 601, 301, 151, 75, 37, 18, 9, 4, 2, 1, 0]

Visualization