Entropy of other languages

[Sandy Harris]

Travis H. <travis+ml-cryptography at subspacefield.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 05:42:49AM -0800, Sandy Harris wrote:
> > He starts from information theory and an assumption that
> > there needs to be some constant upper bound on the
> > receiver's per-symbol processing time. From there, with
> > nothing else, he gets to a proof that the optimal frequency
> > distribution of symbols is always some member of a
> > parameterized set of curves.
>
> Do you remember how he got from the "upper bound on processing time"
> to anything other than a completely uniform distribution of symbols?

No. There was some pretty heavy math in the paper. With it in my hand,
I understood enough to follow the argument. 20 years later with no paper
to hand, I haven't a clue.

Paper is likely somewhere under his home page.
http://www.math.yale.edu/mandelbrot/

> Seems to me a flat distribution has the minimal upper bound on
> information content per symbol for a given amount of information!

Probably, but he did have a proof that the skewed distribution is
more efficient in some ways.

-- 
Sandy Harris
Quanzhou, Fujian, China

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