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Two bits of entropy: In the case of two fair coin tosses, the information entropy in bits is the base-2 logarithm of the number of possible outcomes — with two coins there are four possible outcomes, and two bits of entropy. Generally, information entropy is the average amount of information conveyed by an event, when considering all ...
Using the unit shannon is an explicit reference to a quantity of information content, information entropy or channel capacity, and is not restricted to binary data, [2] whereas bits can as well refer to the number of binary symbols involved, as is the term used in fields such as data processing.
Binary entropy is a special case of (), the entropy function. H ( p ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {H} (p)} is distinguished from the entropy function H ( X ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {H} (X)} in that the former takes a single real number as a parameter whereas the latter takes a distribution or random variable as a parameter.
Shannon entropy (information entropy), being the expected value of the information of an event, is inherently a quantity of the same type and with a unit of information. The International System of Units, by assigning the same unit (joule per kelvin) both to heat capacity and to thermodynamic entropy implicitly treats information entropy as a quantity of dimension one, with 1 nat = 1.
Assume that the combined system determined by two random variables and has joint entropy (,), that is, we need (,) bits of information on average to describe its exact state. Now if we first learn the value of X {\displaystyle X} , we have gained H ( X ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {H} (X)} bits of information.
Entropy equivalent of one bit of information, equal to k times ln(2) [1] 10 −23: 1.381 × 10 −23 J⋅K −1: Boltzmann constant, entropy equivalent of one nat of information. 10 1: 5.74 J⋅K −1: Standard entropy of 1 mole of graphite [2] 10 33: ≈ 10 35 J⋅K −1: Entropy of the Sun (given as ≈ 10 42 erg⋅K −1 in Bekenstein (1973 ...
When measuring entropy using the natural logarithm (ln), the unit of information entropy is called a "nat", but when it is measured using the base-2 logarithm, the unit of information entropy is called a "shannon" (alternatively, "bit"). This is just a difference in units, much like the difference between inches and centimeters.
Although, in both cases, mutual information expresses the number of bits of information common to the two sources in question, the analogy does not imply identical properties; for example, differential entropy may be negative. The differential analogies of entropy, joint entropy, conditional entropy, and mutual information are defined as follows: