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This article discusses how information theory (a branch of mathematics studying the transmission, processing and storage of information) is related to measure theory (a branch of mathematics related to integration and probability). == Measures in information theory == Many of the concepts in information theory have separate definitions and formulas for continuous and discrete cases. For example, entropy is usually defined for discrete random variables, whereas for continuous random variables the related concept of differential entropy, written , is used (see Cover and Thomas, 2006, chapter 8). Both these concepts are mathematical expectations, but the expectation is defined with an integral for the continuous case, and a sum for the discrete case. These separate definitions can be more closely related in terms of measure theory. For discrete random variables, probability mass functions can be considered density functions with respect to the counting measure. Thinking of both the integral and the sum as integration on a measure space allows for a unified treatment. Consider the formula for the differential entropy of a continuous random variable with range and probability density function : : This can usually be interpreted as the following Riemann-Stieltjes integral: : where is the Lebesgue measure. If instead, is discrete, with range a finite set, is a probability mass function on , and is the counting measure on , we can write: : The integral expression and the general concept is identical to the continuous case; the only difference is the measure used. In both cases the probability density function is the Radon–Nikodym derivative of the probability measure with respect to the measure against which the integral is taken. If is the probability measure on , then the integral can also be taken directly with respect to : : If instead of the underlying measure μ we take another probability measure , we are led to the Kullback–Leibler divergence: let and be probability measures over the same space. Then if is absolutely continuous with respect to , written the Radon–Nikodym derivative exists and the Kullback–Leibler divergence can be expressed in its full generality: : where the integral runs over the support of Note that we have dropped the negative sign: the Kullback–Leibler divergence is always non-negative due to Gibbs' inequality. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Information theory and measure theory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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