scholarly journals Causal Information Rate

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (8) ◽  
pp. 1087
Author(s):  
Eun-jin Kim ◽  
Adrian-Josue Guel-Cortez

Information processing is common in complex systems, and information geometric theory provides a useful tool to elucidate the characteristics of non-equilibrium processes, such as rare, extreme events, from the perspective of geometry. In particular, their time-evolutions can be viewed by the rate (information rate) at which new information is revealed (a new statistical state is accessed). In this paper, we extend this concept and develop a new information-geometric measure of causality by calculating the effect of one variable on the information rate of the other variable. We apply the proposed causal information rate to the Kramers equation and compare it with the entropy-based causality measure (information flow). Overall, the causal information rate is a sensitive method for identifying causal relations.

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-97
Author(s):  
Siaw-Fong Chung

The analysis in this paper was based on five Malay narratives of the “frog story”. In these narratives, the types of lexical arguments and their relations with information flow and topic continuity were analyzed. It was found that most narrators used one lexical argument in telling the frog story (e.g., sarang itu jatuh “the nest fell”). About 60% of the verbs in the narratives contained one lexical argument only. Some transitive verbs that usually require the presence of both lexical arguments were used with one lexical argument only when produced in speech (e.g., dia mencari ø di merata tempat “he searched (for) ø everywhere”). Objects were sometimes omitted, as their meanings could be predicted from previous context. Despite the omission of objects, transitive constructions still prevailed in the stories. The most frequently occurring lexical arguments were objects (O) (37%), followed by intransitive subjects (S) (29%) and transitive subjects (A) (27%). In addition, our results showed that new information in Malay was usually allocated to the core argument of the object and to locative expressions, indicating that most of the new information appeared at the end of a clause. On the other hand, topic continuity was held between the subjects in two continuous intonation units. This clear-cut division of discourse functions in the heads and tails of constructions was consistently found in the five pieces of narration. This observation not only showed how ideas could be continued in Malay oral narratives, but also contributes to the study of discourse structure in Malay.


Author(s):  
Joseph Walker

This is the Information Age, and that epicenter is information flow and content control. This is the one occupation that is best suited to benefit from this still evolving epoch of human history. In fact, any organization that fundamentally relies on information dissemination as a core resource to their production would seek out information experts as the de facto experts in this field for consultation on how best to handle their large volumes of information. Today, companies are searching for these very professionals and will pay extraordinarily well to have such expertise in their organizations. As long as they change their mindset, evolve from conservative ideologies of what a library professional is, and retain and improve upon the traditional library services while seeking to develop techniques and technologies that effectively handle the workflow of the information dissemination process in a Digital Age—adapting technologies such as the KATIE Index, the MEL System, and the LISA Informationbase for the physical and virtual collection management requirements—most library professionals will be able to focus on becoming information experts and establish their relevance at the very epicenter of business and education. Evolving into the information expert and leveraging new information technologies is where the future of library studies lays in this digital segment of the Information Age. This chapter concludes the first section of the book.


2011 ◽  
pp. 42-87
Author(s):  
Ashutosh Deshmukh

The Internet spins a vast web of information across the globe. Data and information flow freely — available to anyone for learning, understanding and analysis. Organizations can cooperate across departments, regions and countries. ERP II and ECM herald the era of intra- and inter-business collaboration. Sounds wonderful – what is the problem? The problem is as old as mainframe vs. PC and Windows vs. Macintosh. Data can move freely but are not standardized. Data streams have no universal meanings; consequently, data are not understood by all systems, analyzed easily, translated across different languages and human readable, among other things. Specialized hardware and software is needed for data decoding, and if the required tools are not available, then you are out of luck. This problem is not only confined to the Internet. A great deal of money (by one estimate, almost 20% of the U.S. gross national product) is spent on generating new information, and more than 90% of this information is in documents, not in databases. Businesses in the U.S. produce approximately 100 billion documents per year. This information is stored in various formats across a range of computer systems. These disparate storage formats cause severe problems in accessing, searching and distributing this information. Any solution (a combination of information technology products and services) that manages information across diverse software and hardware platforms must address a few key requirements. First, these solutions should be transparent to users. The technical details should not be handled by users. Second, users should be able to save data and information in the desired format; for example, databases, text files or proprietary formats. Third, a solution must intelligently retrieve data and information. This solution should be knowledgeable regarding meaning of the information itself. Finally, such solution should be capable of providing the desired output — print, screen, Web or CD/DVD format.


1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Hickmann ◽  
Henriëtte Hendriks ◽  
Françoise Roland ◽  
James Liang

ABSTRACTThis study examines children's uses of nominal determiners (‘local markings’) and utterance structure (‘global markings’) to introduce new referents. Two narratives were elicited from preschoolers, seven-year-olds, ten-year-olds, and adults in English (N = 80), French (N = 40), German (N = 40), and Chinese (N = 40). Given typological differences (e.g. richness of morphology), these languages rely differentially on local vs. global devices to mark newness: postverbal position is obligatory in Chinese (determiners optional), indefinite determiners in the other languages (position optional). Three findings recur across languages: obligatory newness markings emerge late (seven-year-olds); local markings emerge first, including Chinese optional ones; local and global markings are strongly related. Crosslinguistic differences also occur: English-speaking preschoolers use local markings least frequently; until adult age global markings are rare in English, not contrastive in German and not as frequent in Chinese as in French, despite obligatoriness. It is concluded that three factors determine acquisition: (1) universal discourse factors governing information flow; (2) cognitive factors resulting from the greater functional complexity of global markings; (3) language-specific factors related to how different systems map both grammatical and discourse functions onto forms.


2009 ◽  
Vol 08 (04) ◽  
pp. 331-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aron Chibba ◽  
Jonas Rundquist

Information sharing is an important factor for effectiveness within the internal supply chain. In this paper we use a methodology for mapping information flows in an internal supply chain, and case studies of two Swedish multinational organisations. Eight retrospective cases were used to map, describe and analyse the information flow that supports the physical material flow from the receipt of an order to point of delivery. Every involved person was interviewed on at least one occasion each. The interviews were conducted to map and describe the information and physical material flow. The aim was to identify factors that could improve and rationalise information flows and generate a better flow within the organisation. The study shows the importance of an integrated information system, but also clearly indicates the importance of a collaborative culture and an awareness of the human–technology interface. The study also shows that three factors of interface distortions are most frequent in the cases: (1) changes registered in the database trigger no action among the staff, (2) new knowledge to staff is stored only orally and not in the database, and (3) interface between the paper system and the database, and between the old and the new information storage culture.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (11) ◽  
pp. 1393
Author(s):  
Eun-jin Kim

Information theory provides an interdisciplinary method to understand important phenomena in many research fields ranging from astrophysical and laboratory fluids/plasmas to biological systems. In particular, information geometric theory enables us to envision the evolution of non-equilibrium processes in terms of a (dimensionless) distance by quantifying how information unfolds over time as a probability density function (PDF) evolves in time. Here, we discuss some recent developments in information geometric theory focusing on time-dependent dynamic aspects of non-equilibrium processes (e.g., time-varying mean value, time-varying variance, or temperature, etc.) and their thermodynamic and physical/biological implications. We compare different distances between two given PDFs and highlight the importance of a path-dependent distance for a time-dependent PDF. We then discuss the role of the information rate Γ=dLdt and relative entropy in non-equilibrium thermodynamic relations (entropy production rate, heat flux, dissipated work, non-equilibrium free energy, etc.), and various inequalities among them. Here, L is the information length representing the total number of statistically distinguishable states a PDF evolves through over time. We explore the implications of a geodesic solution in information geometry for self-organization and control.


Author(s):  
Robert H. Sturges ◽  
David O. Hunt

Abstract Rearranging component positions and orientations inside products can reduce the acquisition times associated with handling distance and component orientation. Modeling the acquisition process with an information-based Design for Assembly methodology identifies and quantifies acquisition difficulty for manual and automatic processes. Heuristics based on evaluations of acquisition difficulty guide the relocation and reorientation of components inside the product to reduce assembly time. Since acquisition time averages one third of the total assembly time, significant improvements are shown to be feasible. A new information flow from downstream assembly issues into product design is demonstrated.


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