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northlondoner 4 days ago

There is a distinction. Usually statistical mechanics means the ensemble theory and partition functions that connects microscopic systems to macroscopic ones from material point of views. However, statistical physics is a bit more generic, for example complex networks may not use ensemble theory or partition functions and could use only statistics on the network, such as average neighbourhood or similar.

kgwgk 4 days ago | parent [-]

People have also used “statistical physics” to refer to the former concept since forever. For example Landau.

“Statistical mechanics” is also used in a broad sense, just like “quantum mechanics” is often used for anything “quantum”.

nakamoto_damacy 4 days ago | parent [-]

What I'm getting from this discussion is that we use Statistical Physics to refer to anything covered by Statistical Physics AND Statistical Mechanics, while we use Statistical Mechanics in a narrower context, but it is also possible that some use SM loosely.

kgwgk 4 days ago | parent [-]

> it is also possible that some use SM loosely

I think it’s frequent. For example: https://teach-me-codes.github.io/computational-physics/the_p...