Questions tagged [entropy]
The entropy tag has no usage guidance.
104
questions
0
votes
1
answer
530
views
Entropy and Information Gain for multi attributes
Is there any way that for specific dataset I can measure entropy and information gain for two or more attributes together? Let's say we have the following dataset:
$\begin{array}{cccccc|c}
x1 & ...
- 51
0
votes
0
answers
72
views
Is it possible for a [futuristic] computer to contain the information of the whole universe?
(This is a question of information theory, data compression and entropy, so I believe it fits CS forum)
Does the fact that the computer itself is a part of the universe make it logically impossible ...
- 71
1
vote
0
answers
136
views
What is the relationship between entropy rate and quantization?
I have a totally random source of signal data that looks like a typical normal distribution. I've included an image as I like pictures:-
The source has a mean of 0, and a standard deviation of 1. ...
- 1,582
1
vote
0
answers
162
views
Compression of gaussian variables
Say I have 2 Gaussian sources X and Y. They are generated with mutivariate gaussian distribution with ...
- 21
1
vote
1
answer
307
views
Higher order empirical entropy is not the entropy of the empirical distribution?
Basically, the problem is that I always thought that the (unnormalized) $k$th order empirical entropy $n\cdot H_k(x)$ (see "Backround" at the end of this post for more information) for a given string $...
- 984
0
votes
1
answer
334
views
Calculate joint entropy of a Hamming Code over a Binary Symmetric Channel?
I have a normal (7,4,3) Hamming Code over GF(2) and a parity check matrix for it (not posted, because I don't think it's involved).
I have a set X of 4 bit source vectors called x. They all have ...
- 127
3
votes
1
answer
130
views
Finding the dichotomy that maximizes information gain for a classifier?
Suppose that $\Omega$ is a finite probability space,with measure $P$ (we can take $P$ uniform). Let $C \in \{\pm 1 \}$ be a random variable on $\Omega$, the classifier. Let
$$H(C) = H(C, \Omega, P) = ...
- 374
3
votes
1
answer
257
views
Complexity of / best algorithm for finding the dichotomy that maximizes information gain?
Suppose that $X$ is a finite set with a probability measure $P$. I want to find the subset $A \subset X$ so that the information gain of conditioning on ${A, A^c}$ is maximal. That is, I want to find $...
- 374
2
votes
1
answer
190
views
Can Von Neumann bit extraction be made more efficient?
I want to develop a previous question regarding Von Neumann debiasing /randomness extraction.
The typical solution (as posted) is to take pairs of throws and output a bit based on a comparison of ...
- 1,582
2
votes
1
answer
170
views
Kraft's inequality and Shannon's noiseless coding theorem for an encoding
A discrete memoryless source W has words $w_1,w_2,w_3,w_4,w_5,w_6$ that occur with probablilities $0.05,0.05,0.15,0.2,0.25,0.3$ respectivley.
Does there exist a compact instantaneous binary encoding ...
- 91
1
vote
0
answers
82
views
Approximate conditional entropy
Given a set of random variables $X = \{x_1, x_2, \dots, x_n\}$. If the conditional entropy for all $Y \subset X - \{X_i\}$ where $|Y| \leq 5$. How to approximate conditional entropy when $|Y| = 10$ ...
- 19
3
votes
1
answer
125
views
Extracting Randomness from Mouse Acceleration
I'm working on trying to make an "entropy pool" that will be fed as input into an RNG (as in, ex, Fortuna). In order to do so, I need to take various collected data and extract as much entropy as ...
- 751
0
votes
1
answer
90
views
Numerical example of theoretical diff file size using Kullback Leibler?
I understand that the theoretical size of a diff patch between two similar files can be calculated using Kullback Leibler (KL) as described @ Wikipedia. Can anyone point me to a numerical example of ...
- 1,582
7
votes
2
answers
218
views
How best to statistically verify random numbers?
Lets say I have 1000 bytes that are supposedly random. I want to verify to a certain certainty that they are indeed random and evenly distributed across all byte values. Aside from calculating the ...
- 73
4
votes
2
answers
230
views
Measuring the information of a document?
I'd like to measure how much information a document $D$ contains.
Clearly, the New York Times published yesterday contains more information than my diary wrote on the same day. But, I do not know ...
- 239
1
vote
0
answers
121
views
Can file entropy be predictable?
I am working on some lossless compression topic and looking on any resources or prior studies on lossless file entropy predictability.
Assuming we know type of the file (we can tell its belongs to ...
- 111
1
vote
2
answers
54
views
Amount of information in scaled-down images
Does an image that is scaled down lose more Information when
calculating averages of pixels rather than selecting single pixels?
One way to scale down an image is to replace 2x2 pixel blocks with ...
- 111
1
vote
0
answers
120
views
Find minimum conditional entropy
Task : Given $X$ random variables. Find out the minimum conditional entropy for a variable $x_i \in X$ when $x_i$ is conditioned upon any combination $k$ remaining variables.
Find $min(Entropy (x_i | ...
- 699
5
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Computing Von Neumann Entropy Efficiently
The Von Neumann entropy $S$ of a density matrix $\rho$ is defined to be $S(\rho)= -\text{tr}(\rho \lg \rho)$. Equivalently, $S$ is the classical entropy of the eigenvalues $\lambda_k$ treated as ...
- 5,722
12
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Is there a generalization of Huffman Coding to Arithmetic coding?
In trying to understand the relationships between Huffman Coding, Arithmetic Coding, and Range Coding, I began to think of the shortcomings of Huffman coding to be related to the problem of fractional ...
- 6,061
1
vote
0
answers
51
views
Approach to data compression with unknown patterns [closed]
Let's say I have a file with symbols of an alphabet [0,N-1], N around 50. The actual data is a file with a lot of lines, each containing 100 of these symbols.
I want to compress this data. By doing a ...
3
votes
1
answer
89
views
Maximum entropy probability distribution among Solomonoff priors
If we take Solomonoff's prior $m$, defined here and normalize it we get a probability mass function on all finite words.
But, the pmf isn't completely determined until we fix a universal Turing ...
- 315
3
votes
2
answers
589
views
How to extract randomness from a file?
I have a generator of files with approximately 7 bits /byte entropy. The files are about 30KB each in length. I'd like to use these as sources of entropy to generate random numbers. Theoretically I ...
- 1,582
10
votes
1
answer
3k
views
How to practically measure entropy of a file?
I'm trying to measure now much non redundant (actual) information my file contains. Some call this the amount of entropy.
Of course there is the standard p(x) log{p(x)}, but I think that Shannon was ...
- 1,582
3
votes
2
answers
911
views
Why Shannon's Entropy is said to be a measure of information?
I got a bit of how Shannon explained to find the number of bits required to represent a message and Shannon's Entropy.But it's natural to know that to code alphabet letters you need ...
- 339
13
votes
4
answers
8k
views
Compression of Random Data is Impossible?
A few days ago this appeared on HN http://www.patrickcraig.co.uk/other/compression.htm. This refers to a challenge from 2001 - where someone was offering a prize of \$5000 for any kind of reduction to ...
- 389
2
votes
1
answer
131
views
Entropy notation: What does this mean?
If you look at page 13 of the lecture slides here there is this line
$H(Y) = H((1-\pi)(1-\alpha), \alpha, \pi(1-\alpha))$
I don't really understand what the term on right hand side is. At first I ...
- 171
2
votes
1
answer
45
views
Using all the entropy in an biased bit
Suppose we have $n$ bits of random-looking data, and we want to encode it in such a way that instead of 1/2 the bits being 1's, we have (say) 3/4 the bits being 1's. The entropy of each bit in the new ...
- 121
2
votes
1
answer
200
views
Is a very long plain text password harder to crack than a short complicated password? [closed]
Is it true that a password consisting of the alphabet, even of common known names is much harder to find for a computer program than a short password, even though it uses numbers and other characters?
user13282
6
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Mutual information intuition
I was creating an example for a casual talk on mutual information. I considered a system of two coins, which with probability 1/2 are copies of each other, and with probability 1/2 are independent.
...
- 183
0
votes
0
answers
82
views
Entropy of residuals and noise
Relation of Entropy and SNR : Based on this question and answer, I had another question that struck me and I am curious to know, if somebody can shed some light, on the following situation: $y= ...
- 213
21
votes
2
answers
6k
views
How does an operating system create entropy for random seeds?
On Linux, the files /dev/random and /dev/urandom files are the blocking and non-blocking (respectively) sources of pseudo-random ...
- 417
2
votes
1
answer
268
views
Relationship between message entropy and complexity of the best algorithm
Is it possible to estimate number of steps in best possible algorithm for classification of messages, using entropy of messages?
E.g. linear search problem. We have an ordered set of incomparable ...
5
votes
1
answer
403
views
Conceptual question about entropy and information
Shannon's entropy measures the information content by means of probability. Is it the information content or the information that increases or decreases with entropy? Increase in entropy means that ...
- 213
3
votes
0
answers
143
views
How to compare conditional entropy and mutual information?
I am solving a problem of information theory. The problem reads,
Consider a stationary memoryless channel specified by the channel matrix
$T = \begin{pmatrix}1-q&q\\r&1-r\end{pmatrix}$. ...
- 131
32
votes
7
answers
2k
views
Is there a connection between the halting problem and thermodynamic entropy?
Alan Turing proposed a model for a machine (the Turing Machine, TM) which computes (numbers, functions, etc.) and proved the Halting Theorem.
A TM is an abstract concept of a machine (or engine if ...
- 929
40
votes
7
answers
5k
views
Can PRNGs be used to magically compress stuff?
This idea occurred to me as a kid learning to program and
on first encountering PRNG's. I still don't know how realistic
it is, but now there's stack exchange.
Here's a 14 year-old's scheme for an ...
user15782
6
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Showing that the entropy of i.i.d. random variables is the sum of entropies
The shannon entropy of a random variable $Y$ (with possible outcomes $\Sigma=\{\sigma_{1},...,\sigma_{k}\}$) is given by
$H(Y)=-\sum\limits_{i=1}^{k}P(Y=\sigma_{i})\;\log(P(Y=\sigma_{i}))$.
For a ...
- 984
7
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Compressing normally distributed data
Given normally distributed integers with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation $\sigma$ around 1000, how do I compress those numbers (almost) perfectly? Given the entropy of the Gaussian distribution, ...
- 243
4
votes
0
answers
375
views
Is there a relationship between graph entropy and node entropy?
Eagle, et al [1] discuss the notion of node entropy and this is captured in igraph via the diversity metric. I was wondering if there was any relationship between these node entropies and the idea of ...
- 141
5
votes
2
answers
849
views
Estimate entropy, based upon observed frequency counts
Suppose I have $n$ independent observations $x_1,\dots,x_n$ from some unknown distribution over a known alphabet $\Sigma$, and I want to estimate the entropy of the distribution. I can count the ...
D.W.♦
- 140k
5
votes
2
answers
543
views
How do computers compute?
This is a kind of follow-up to a question I asked on superuser, where I asked for the definitions of a 'distinghuisable state' and a 'memory cell'. My questions where properly answered, but I was ...
- 151
10
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Constrainted Optimization Problem in Matrix Entropy
I have a constrainted optimization problem in the (Shannon) matrix entropy $\mathtt{(sum(entr(eig(A))))}$. The matrix $A$ can be written as the sum of rank 1 matrices of the form $[v_i\,v_i^T]$ where $...
- 103
0
votes
1
answer
273
views
Notions of information content and randomness of binary square matrix
We have well established theory for measuring the information content and randomness of binary strings. Notions such as Shanon entropy and Kolmogorov-complexity were developed for binary strings.
For ...
- 4,313
18
votes
2
answers
960
views
What's harder: Shuffling a sorted deck or sorting a shuffled one?
You have an array of $n$ distinct elements. You have access to a comparator (a black box function taking two elements $a$ and $b$ and returning true iff $a < b$) and a truly random source of bits (...
- 4,009
7
votes
1
answer
739
views
Shannon Entropy to Min-Entropy
In many papers I've read that it is well known that the Shannon entropy of a random variable can be converted to min-entropy (up to small statistical distance) by taking independent copies of the ...
- 123
5
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Pointwise mutual information vs. Mutual information?
I am learning about information theory and mutual information. However, I am quite confused with MI(Mutual information) vs. PMI(Pointwise mutual information) especially signs of MI and PMI values. ...
- 305
3
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Why is the Shannon entropy 0.94 in this example?
Suppose I have a decision tree in which there is a label $L$ under which is the attribute $A$ as shown below. I am given that the Shannon entropy of label $L$ is $H(L) = 0.95$.
I must find the ...
- 1,547
2
votes
1
answer
197
views
Increasing entropy of random walk
Let $P$ be a transition matrix of a random walk in an undirected (may not regular) graph $G$. Let $\pi$ be a distribution on $V(G)$. The Shannon entropy of $\pi$ is defined by
$$H(\pi)=-\sum_{v \in ...
- 283
9
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Rényi entropy at infinity or min-entropy
I'm reading a paper that refers to the limit as n goes to infinity of Rényi entropy. It defines it as ${{H}_{n}}\left( X \right)=\dfrac{1}{1-n} \log_2 \left( \sum\limits_{i=1}^{N}{p_{i}^{n}} \right)$. ...
- 445