NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
Measuring Questions: Relevance and its Relation to EntropyThe Boolean lattice of logical statements induces the free distributive lattice of questions. Inclusion on this lattice is based on whether one question answers another. Generalizing the zeta function of the question lattice leads to a valuation called relevance or bearing, which is a measure of the degree to which one question answers another. Richard Cox conjectured that this degree can be expressed as a generalized entropy. With the assistance of yet another important result from Janos Acz6l, I show that this is indeed the case; and that the resulting inquiry calculus is a natural generalization of information theory. This approach provides a new perspective of the Principle of Maximum Entropy.
Document ID
20040086925
Acquisition Source
Ames Research Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Knuth, Kevin H.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 21, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2004
Subject Category
Theoretical Mathematics
Meeting Information
Meeting: MaxEnt 2004
Location: Garching
Country: Germany
Start Date: July 25, 2004
End Date: July 30, 2004
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

Available Downloads

There are no available downloads for this record.
No Preview Available