home
text

Because there are around 7 billion humans on the planet, the identity of a random, unknown person contains just under 33 bits of entropy (two to the power of 33 is 8 billion). When we learn a new fact about a person, that fact reduces the entropy of their identity by a certain amount. There is a formula to say how much:

ΔS = - log2 Pr(X=x)

Full article.

1 year ago

March 3, 2010
blog comments powered by Disqus