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The Principle of Maximum Entropy is a rigorous technique for estimating an unknown distribution given partial information while simultaneously minimizing bias. However, an important requirement for applying the principle is that the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Kenneth Bogert , Matthew Kothe

Choice overload occurs when individuals feel overwhelmed by an excessive number of options. Experimental evidence suggests that a larger selection can complicate the decision-making process. Consequently, choice satisfaction may diminish…

Physics and Society · Physics 2024-12-18 Mojtaba Madadi Asl , Kamal Hajian , Rouzbeh Torabi , Mehdi Sadeghi

We introduce an epistemic information measure between two data streams, that we term $influence$. Closely related to transfer entropy, the measure must be estimated by epistemic agents with finite memory resources via sampling accessible…

The use of maximum entropy inference in reasoning with uncertain information is commonly justified by an information-theoretic argument. This paper discusses a possible objection to this information-theoretic justification and shows how it…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-04-15 Daniel Hunter

Maximum entropy estimation is of broad interest for inferring properties of systems across many different disciplines. In this work, we significantly extend a technique we previously introduced for estimating the maximum entropy of a set of…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2016-01-05 Elliot A. Martin , Jaroslav Hlinka , Alexander Meinke , Filip Děchtěrenko , Jörn Davidsen

This paper is a review of a particular approach to the method of maximum entropy as a general framework for inference. The discussion emphasizes the pragmatic elements in the derivation. An epistemic notion of information is defined in…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2021-08-04 Ariel Caticha

Entropy is a measure of self-information which is used to quantify losses. Entropy was developed in thermodynamics, but is also used to compare probabilities based on their deviating information content. Corresponding model uncertainty is…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-01-23 Alois Pichler , Ruben Schlotter

Shannon entropy, a cornerstone of information theory, statistical physics and inference methods, is uniquely identified by the Shannon-Khinchin or Shore-Johnson axioms. Generalizations of Shannon entropy, motivated by the study of…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2026-04-20 Andrea Somazzi , Diego Garlaschelli

Can we learn more from data than existed in the generating process itself? Can new and useful information be constructed from merely applying deterministic transformations to existing data? Can the learnable content in data be evaluated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Marc Finzi , Shikai Qiu , Yiding Jiang , Pavel Izmailov , J. Zico Kolter , Andrew Gordon Wilson

We review with a tutorial scope the information theory foundations of quantum statistical physics. Only a small proportion of the variables that characterize a system at the microscopic scale can be controlled, for both practical and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 R. Balian

Entropic Dynamics is a framework in which dynamical laws are derived as an application of entropic methods of inference. No underlying action principle is postulated. Instead, the dynamics is driven by entropy subject to the constraints…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-09-11 Ariel Caticha

The following three sections and appendices are taken from my thesis "The Foundations of Inference and its Application to Fundamental Physics" from 2021, in which I construct a theory of entropic inference from first principles. The…

Other Statistics · Statistics 2022-07-19 Nicholas Carrara

A central task in analyzing complex dynamics is to determine the loci of information storage and the communication topology of information flows within a system. Over the last decade and a half, diagnostics for the latter have come to be…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-06-20 Ryan G. James , Nix Barnett , James P. Crutchfield

Non-deductive reasoning systems are often {\em representation dependent}: representing the same situation in two different ways may cause such a system to return two different answers. Some have viewed this as a significant problem. For…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Joseph Y. Halpern , Daphne Koller

Entropy is critically examined as a fundamental concept in contemporary science and informatics. Although the typical Shannon entropy provides a proper framework for describing the canonical ensemble, it fails to represent adequately the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-02-23 Roumen Tsekov

Constraints on entropies are considered to be the laws of information theory. Even though the pursuit of their discovery has been a central theme of research in information theory, the algorithmic aspects of constraints on entropies remain…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2020-04-28 Mahmoud Abo Khamis , Phokion G. Kolaitis , Hung Q. Ngo , Dan Suciu

This paper has a flaw in an argument that uses the weak-* convergence of measures. The paper was replaced by "Entropy and Its Variational Principle for Locally Compact Metrizable Systems", by the same authors.

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2015-11-09 André Caldas , Mauro Patrão

Entropy is a very useful concept from physics that tries to explain how a system behaves from a point of view of the thermodynamics. However, there are two ways to explain entropy, and it depends on if we are studying a microsystem or a…

General Finance · Quantitative Finance 2024-07-02 Martin Pomares Calero

The major problem in information theoretic analysis of neural responses and other biological data is the reliable estimation of entropy--like quantities from small samples. We apply a recently introduced Bayesian entropy estimator to…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2009-09-29 Ilya Nemenman , William Bialek , Rob de Ruyter van Steveninck

We study maximum-entropy inference for finite-dimensional quantum states under linear moment constraints. Given expectation values of finitely many observables, the feasible set of states is convex but typically non-unique. The…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-10-27 James Tian