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The inspiration for adopting the word entropy in information theory came from the close resemblance between Shannon's formula and very similar known formulae from statistical mechanics. In statistical thermodynamics the most general formula for the thermodynamic entropy S of a thermodynamic system is the Gibbs entropy
Despite the foregoing, there is a difference between the two quantities. The information entropy Η can be calculated for any probability distribution (if the "message" is taken to be that the event i which had probability p i occurred, out of the space of the events possible), while the thermodynamic entropy S refers to thermodynamic probabilities p i specifically.
In probability theory and information theory, the mutual information (MI) of two random variables is a measure of the mutual dependence between the two variables. More specifically, it quantifies the " amount of information " (in units such as shannons ( bits ), nats or hartleys ) obtained about one random variable by observing the other random ...
Shannon originally wrote down the following formula for the entropy of a continuous distribution, known as differential entropy: = ().Unlike Shannon's formula for the discrete entropy, however, this is not the result of any derivation (Shannon simply replaced the summation symbol in the discrete version with an integral), and it lacks many of the properties that make the discrete entropy a ...
Entropy is a scientific concept, most commonly associated with states of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the microscopic description of nature in statistical physics, and to the principles of information theory.
The landmark event establishing the discipline of information theory and bringing it to immediate worldwide attention was the publication of Claude E. Shannon's classic paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in the Bell System Technical Journal in July and October 1948.
In information theory, the conditional entropy quantifies the amount of information needed to describe the outcome of a random variable given that the value of another random variable is known. Here, information is measured in shannons , nats , or hartleys .
Thermodynamic entropy is equal to the Boltzmann constant times the information entropy expressed in nats. The information entropy expressed with the unit shannon (Sh) is equal to the number of yes–no questions that need to be answered in order to determine the microstate from the macrostate. The concepts of "disorder" and "spreading" can be ...