Folks I know there is a long legacy of equating information with entropy, and dimensionally, they are the same. Qualitatively, however, they are antithetical. From the point of view of statistical mechanics, information is a *decrease* in entropy, i.e., they are negatives of each other.
This all devolves back upon the requirement that *both* entropy and information require a reference state. (The third law of thermodynamics.) Once a reference distribution has been identified, one can then quantify both entropy and information. It actually turns out that against any reference state, entropy can be parsed into two components, mutual information and conditional (or residual) entropy. Change the reference state and the decomposition changes. <http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/FISPAP.pdf> (See also Chapter 5 in <http://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/publications/ecosystems/gand/>.) Cheers to all, Bob > Folks, > > Doing dimensional analysis entropy is heat difference divided by > temperature. Heat is energy, and temperature is energy per degree of > freedom. Dividing, we get units of inverse degrees of freedom. I submit > that information has the same fundamental measure (this is a consequence > of Scott Muller¡¯s asymmetry principle of information. So fundamentally we > are talking about the same basic thing with information and entropy. > > I agree, though, that it is viewed from different perspectives and they > have differing conventions for measurement. > > I agree with Loet¡¯s other points. > > John _______________________________________________ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
