Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Entropy: sorted=0 unsorted=237



Isn't John wonderful; it is his want to just go ahead and do some
calculation and see what the results lead us to....

But, John, I have a couple of questions:

At 10:54 AM 2/11/00 -0500, Barlow Newbolt wrote:
>I thought the probability of any particular arrangement of cards in
>a deck is the same.

Good! Indeed all such microstates are equally likely.

> It shouldn't matter (in my view) whether the cards
>are all arranged in order or not--they are in some order and that is all
>that matters.

Well, it depends on what you are told about the deck.
--) If you are told it is sorted (in the standard order), then there is
only one ordering that is consistent with that description. That's zero
entropy.

John, this is a bit of a philosophichal question: If I _know_ that the
deck is ordered, then the entropy is nil. But if the deck _is_ ordered but
I don't know it, the entropy is huge. Why should this be????

--) In contrast, if you are told that the deck is unsorted, then there are
something like 54 factorial different orderings that are consistent with
that description. That's 237 bits of entropy.

54???

How are you calculating the entropy?

Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen