Truncating the hierarchy of moment equations based on point distribution—application to innovation diffusion

The phenomenon of innovation diffusion, modeled as a nonlinear birth process, leads to a hierarchy of moment equations. For gaining insight into the evolution of moments of a number of adopters in innovation diffusion, truncation procedures based on point distributions are proposed for truncating the hierarchy of moment equations. It is found that the results obtained by employing new truncation procedures are in close agreement with analytical results based on system size expansion for large population size.