On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 09:33:26PM +0000, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote: > > From: [email protected] [mailto:discuss- > > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Dan Ritter > > > > Shannon's experimental tests are reported and repeatable, and > > have in fact been repeated several times. > > My puzzle was 139 characters long, I completed it in 380 total guesses and > 241 incorrect guesses. The measured Shannon entropy was 1.95 bits per > character.
You're interpreting it incorrectly. The estimator method gives an upper bound on Shannon entropy, not a precise measurement. Note that the larger the number of experiments, the smaller the figure becomes, until people have converged on 1.1 bits per character. Suppose we play the game, and I think of a phrase, and you say "the magic word is squeamish ossifrage", and purely by chance, that is what I was thinking of. Is the entropy zero? -dsr- _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
