scholarly journals Quantitative Characterization of Complex Systems—An Information Theoretic Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Aditya Akundi ◽  
Eric Smith
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Systems Of Systems ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
Information Theoretic Approach

A significant increase in System-of-Systems (SoS) is currently observed in the social and technical domains. As a result of the increasing number of constituent system components, Systems of Systems are becoming larger and more complex. Recent research efforts have highlighted the importance of identifying innovative statistical and theoretical approaches for analyzing complex systems to better understand how they work. This paper portrays the use of an agnostic two-stage examination structure for complex systems aimed towards developing an information theory-based approach to analyze complex technical and socio-technical systems. Towards the goal of characterizing system complexity with information entropy, work was carried out in exploring the potential application of entropy to a simulated case study to illustrate its applicability and to establish the use of information theory within the broad horizon of complex systems. Although previous efforts have been made to use entropy for understanding complexity, this paper provides a basic foundation for identifying a framework to characterize complexity, in order to analyze and assess complex systems in different operational domains.

scholarly journals REALISMO, STRUTTURA, INFORMAZIONE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristian Mariani
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Quantum Information ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Quantum Information Theory ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Standard Object ◽  
The Common ◽  
Informational Realism ◽  
Information Theoretic Approach

In recent years, many scholars (Ladyman & Ross [39]; Floridi [25]; Bynum [9]) have been discussing the possibility of an ‘informational’ realism. The common idea behind these projects is that of taking the notion of ‘information’ as the central concept of both our scientific practice and our ontology. At the same time, many experts in Quantum Information Theory (Lloyd [40]; Vedral [53]; Chiribella, D’Ariano & Perinotti [14]) have developed the idea that it is possible to ground all our physical theories by following an information-theoretic approach. In what follows, I aim at showing that it is still not at all clear what does it mean to be an ‘informational realist’. Consequently, I show the reasons why I believe is misleading to talk about informational realism as something that could actually supersede the most common forms of realism, namely the standard ‘object oriented’ and the structural ones. Finally, I suggest that the only plausible way to define informational realism, and thus, more generally, to take a realist attitudine towards Quantum Information Theory, is that of assuming an epistemic and moderate structural position.

Limitations of Archaeological Inference: An Information-Theoretic Approach with Applications in Methodology

1973 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Justeson
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Design Elements ◽  
Utility Of Information ◽  
Information Theoretic Measures ◽  
Information Theoretic Approach

AbstractA framework is established for the application of information-theoretic concepts to the study of archaeological inference, ultimately to provide an estimate of the degree to which archaeologists, or anthropologists in general, can provide legitimate answers to the questions they investigate. Particular information-theoretic measures are applied to the design elements on the ceramics of a southwestern pueblo to show the methodological utility of information theory in helping to reach closer to that limit.

scholarly journals Typical Yet Unlikely: An Information Theoretic Approach to the Quantification of 'Normality'

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J Vowels
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Arithmetic Average ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Information Theoretic Approach ◽  
Complex Phenomena

Normality has historically been considered an aspirational trait, synonymous with harmony and ideality. The arithmetic average has been used to define normality, and is often used both productively and unproductively as a blunt way to characterize samples and populations. A number of prior commentaries in the fields of psychology and social science have highlighted the need for caution when reducing complex phenomena to a single mean value. However, to the best of our knowledge, none have described and explained why the mean provides such a poor characterization of normality. We demonstrate that even for datasets with a relatively low number of dimensions (<10), data start to exhibit a number of peculiarities which become progressively severe as the number of dimensions increases. One such peculiarity is that the mean is both the most likely as well as one of the least typical points in multi-dimensional space. The availability of large, multi-dimensional datasets is increasing, and it is therefore especially important that researchers understand the peculiar characteristics of such data. We show that normality can be better characterized with `typicality', an information theoretic concept relating to the entropy of a distribution. An application of typicality to both synthetic and real-world data reveals that in multi-dimensional space, to be normal is actually to be highly atypical.

scholarly journals Information theory and dimensionality of space

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Subhash Kak
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Hausdorff Dimension ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Physical Principle ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Optimal Representation ◽  
Information Theoretic Approach ◽  
Dimensionality Of Space

AbstractWe present an information-theoretic approach to the optimal representation of the intrinsic dimensionality of data and show it is a noninteger. Since optimality is accepted as a physical principle, this provides a theoretical explanation for why noninteger dimensions are useful in many branches of physics, where they have been introduced based on experimental considerations. Noninteger dimensions correlate with lesser density as in the Hausdorff dimension and this can have measurable effects. We use the lower density of noninteger dimension to resolve the problem of two different values of the Hubble constant obtained using different methods.

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