English

Shannon's entropy revisited

Information Theory 2015-04-08 v1 math.IT

Abstract

I consider the effect of a finite sample size on the entropy of a sample of independent events. I propose formula for entropy which satisfies Shannon's axioms, and which reduces to Shannon's entropy when sample size is infinite. I discuss the physical meaning of the difference between two formulas, including some practical implications, such as maximum achievable channel utilization, and minimum achievable communication protocol overhead, for a given message size.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1504.01407,
  title  = {Shannon's entropy revisited},
  author = {Sergei Viznyuk},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.01407},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:11:06.861Z