ConceptsEntropy
Concept · information theory · in 5 mysteries
Entropy
A measure of how unpredictable a text's next sign is, given what came before.
The average information per sign, in bits: high for a text whose next sign is hard to guess, low for one that repeats itself. Measured at different orders (one sign at a time, pairs, triples) it describes how a text is built, and natural languages, ciphers, codes and random strings each fall in characteristic bands. The Voynich Manuscript's low second-order entropy is one of the hardest facts any account of it has to explain.
Where it comes up
Glozel: the inscribed tablets of the Fradin field
A machine-readable transcription of Morlet's Corpus, with a sign list keyed to his 111 signs and Hitz's 80, would allow Crawford's 1977 test to be repeated on all the tablets with modern methods: sign-frequency…
Indus script
Conditional and block entropy of sign sequences separate writing from non-linguistic systems, and place the Indus signs with writing.
Conditional and block entropy of sign sequences separate writing from non-linguistic systems, and place the…Statistical measures applied to real non-linguistic systems cannot reliably separate them from writing, so…The Indus corpus's conditional entropy sits with linguistic systems and away from the artificial extremes.Conditional entropy of sign pairs lies in the range of natural-language scripts.Sign-pair data used in the 2009 entropy analysis
Voynich Manuscript
The text is a natural language written phonetically in an invented alphabet or syllabary.
A real language in a new scriptThe departures from language are not layout effectsWhatever the symbols are, the word sequence carries information the way a language's…Entropy law and word-order gainCodex structure and statistics (entropy, Zipf, word length, slot grammar, line effects, A/B keyness, labels)Glyph entropy is lower than in any of 103 languages
Pictish symbol stones
A calibrated entropy decision tree can classify small symbol corpora by type, and it shows the Pictish symbols are writing.
Vinča signs
Wu and colleagues encoded Winn's corpus precisely so that Vinča could serve as a known non-linguistic comparison for the Indus and Pictish entropy debates .
Methods that use it 2
Entropy law and word-order gain
MTHVoynich Manuscript
Cite it
Mysteries Department. (2026). Entropy [Concept CPT0DECVZZSAC8F]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/CPT0DECVZZSAC8F
@misc{mysteriesdept_cpt0decvzzsac8f,
title = {Entropy},
author = {{Mysteries Department}},
year = {2026},
note = {Concept, catalog key CPT0DECVZZSAC8F},
url = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/CPT0DECVZZSAC8F}
}