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From: mcguffin@ll.mit.edu (Bruce McGuffin)
Subject: Re: Information And Entropy (models)
In-Reply-To: craigen@uwpg02.uwinnipeg.ca's message of 4 NOV 94 12:33:41 GMT
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Doug Craigen wrote:

   later in a course we would show that the general definition of
   entropy matched
   the general form of Shannon's Uncertainty (except for the same constant)

I think that the question was: is it just a coincidence that Shannon's
entropy and physical entropy are given by the same equation, or is
there some underlying priciple that connects the two concepts? Shannon
named his concept entropy because of the resemblance in form, (see The
Mathematical Theory of Communication by Shannon and Weaver, University
of Illinois Press, 1959 or the original paper by Shannon in the Bell
System Technical Journal, July, 1948) but never gave a reason why they
should be the same. I once asked a good information theorist, who
guessed that the connection was a coincidence, but admitted to not
knowing much about statistical mechanics.

By the way, there is a group on information theory (alt.info-theory)
where this thread probably ought to move. I have added it to the
address list, but didn't cut any of the original addresses, so folks
would know where it is. Future respondants should cut the list to
applicable groups.  Right now about the only posts in alt.info-theory
are from occasional clueless new-agers who think that information
theory has something to do with cosmic conciousness.

Bruce (I audited Information Theory and didn't learn a thing) McGuffin


