Archive for logarithm

Logarithmic Measure of Information (Entropy Primer)

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags , , , on June 1, 2013 by Brit Cruise

It wasn’t until 1920 that the question “how do we quantify information” was well articulated. This video introduces a key idea of Nyquist and Hartley, who laid the groundwork for Claude Shannon’s historic equation (Information Entropy) two decades later. In these early papers, the idea of using a logarithmic function appears, something which isn’t immediately obvious to most students fresh to this subject. If one ‘takes this for granted’ they will forever miss the deeper insights which come later. So, the goal of this video is to provide intuition behind why the logarithm was the ‘natural’ choice…

Link to Khan Academy lesson.

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