Lab 10

Hartley and Shannon both have different ways of measuring uncertainty. Hartley's measure refers to the amount of uncertainty associated with a set of alternatives. This is measured by the amount of information needed to remove the uncertainty. It refers to the information revealed after we know the outcome. This is given by the Hartley function which is H(A):=logb(׀A׀) where if the log base is 2, then the uncertainty is measured in bits. If is it the natural logarithm, then the unit is
nat. Shannon entropy, on the other hand, is the average amount of uncertainty associated with a set of weighted alternatives measured by the average amount of information needed to remove the uncertainty. The main difference is that shannon entropy refers to averages with a random variable. Shannon entropy shows the average amount of infomation that the recipient is missing when they do not know the value of a random variable, whereas Hartley is how much information needed to remove the uncertainty.

Flowchart

Lab 9

I learned a lot in this lab about making calculations using Excel. The lab forced me to calculate things on my own before using the computer. It was much easier using the computer's data analysis tool. This shows how advanced technology is becomming and how helpful it can be. Data analysis is very helpful in transforming data with the aim of extracting useful information. This includes statistical analysis and curve fitting. It is very useful in finding patterns in data. This can be used in many real life examples. There are relationships between many variables. Some real life examples that we discussed in class are years of schooling vs. level of income, high-school vs college gpa, and inflation rate vs prime lending rate. There are also different types of relationships such as direct and inverse linear. Scattter diagrams around linear relationships help show whether a diagram is more accurate estimator of x and y or a less accurate estimate. Comparing the data you have collected to the linear model in the diagram can account differences between actual values and an estimated value. Overall, this lab taught me a lot about analyzing information and i found it very useful.

Lab 8

Lab7

This does in fact prove De Morgan's Law because although it looks different it is still doing the same thing for each output. It as if we were taking away the parantheses and distributing the signs among the different parts of the equation. If you would run each one without putting them on the same page it would give you the same results.

Lab 7

This screen shot shows you the relationships between the numbers on the logic gate. If the numbers are the same, it yields a true result and if they are different it is false.

Lab 6 Post

I found that the binary number of 110010101 is equal to 810 in decimal. I did this just by following the lecture slides. I used the Binary Arithmetic rules. These are just simple addition rules used to convert binary to decimal. For the second question, i found that the decimal number 529 is equal to 1000010001. I found this just by following the process of finding the quotient and then remainder. This week, i also learned a lot about positional and the non-positional number system. The positional system is means the value of each digit is determined by its position. Non-positional means the value is not affected by its position.

Lab 5 Unix Commands

The first command I chose is "whoami". This command gives you the current user name. It relates to Windows/DOS because you can access user information and profile settings from the start menu.

The second command I chose is "more". This command scrolls through a file. This relates to Windows/DOS when you are just pressing the up and down arrows to look through a document.

The third command I selected is "rm". This removes a file. It relates to the "delete" key in the Windows/DOS format. This just gets rid of a file.

The final command I chose is "cd". This is moving to another directory. It relates to the Windows/DOS when you are moving from folder to folder or directory to directory.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

After reading chapter 6, I feel much more knowledgeable on “global swarming”. The first thing that I found important was the discussion of recommender systems. They are computer programs that attempt to predict items such as movies, music, books, news, and web pages. These are all things that a user might be interested in and they give information about the user’s profile. This is how it is used in Amazon.com because they sell all of these types of items. Recommender systems are very important and useful in this industry of online retail. They are also used in social networking sites such as Facebook. This is done through collaborative filtering. Collaborative filtering is the method of filtering the interests of a user by collecting taste information from many users. This is exactly what Facebook does. In Facebook, a user is able to put down his or her interests and then search for others in their network with similar interests. The chapter also got into how search engines work. They mine the knowledge implicit in multiple trails that structure the web. The first search engines relied on very simple forms of first- order heuristic search. Web search engines work by storing information about a large number of web pages, which they retrieve from the WWW itself. This is done using a Web crawler, also known as a spider. It follows every link it sees. When a user comes to the search engine and makes a query, by using key words, the engine looks up the index and provides a listing of the best matching web pages. Search Engines are only useful if the result given is relevant. This is why most search engines rank their results in order of relevance. The reading also presents a metaphor using the digital world and the biological world. All ants and insects are forced to chose paths. This is very similar to search engines and the world wide web. Search engines take you on a path to where you want to go. Overall, I learned a lot from this reading about the web. There are things I take fro granted and I never think about how they work. This reading helped me to understand these things.

Response to "Modeling the World"

I find it interesting how far information goes back. The article discusses how physics was the first set of precise rules dating all the way back to Aristotle. He was the first to relate symbols to the external world. He came up with mathematical rules to explain why certain things happen in the world. The notes then go into discussing what a model is. It defines it as any complete and consistent set of verbal arguments, mathematical equations, or computational rules which is thought to correspond to some other entity. This pretty much means that a model describes how somehting works. The main purposes of modeling are for data analysis, interpretation, control, prediction, and understanding. It is basically just to help with understanding. The next thing that is necesary to understand models is how they are created. They cannot exist without experimentation so it is always needed to perform tests. This is how information is gained. Overall, I found this reading very interesting and it helped me because I feel like sometimes I take advantage of simple aspects of life. This helped me realize where it all comes from.

response to lecture notes: The Nature of Information- Lab 2

My Response

I read the lecture notes: The Nature of Information. It defines information as the action of informing; formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge. This is a very good definition because it shows how important that information actually is in the world. The main thing that i got from the notes is that transmiting information has evolved more and more. The computer was a very important invention because it made alomst all information at almost everyones grasp whenever they want. There is so much to be learned on the internet and it has improved the world of information drastically. The notes proceed to talk about how information is not just one particular field but is in fact the basis for all comunication. It is the way we categorize our environment.
The notes got me to thinking a lot about how i use information in everyday life and dont even realize it. I read signs everyday in almost every building that i am in at school. I have never thought about how they display information using signs by semantics. Signs are very interesting to me and they display all different kinds of information. I enjoyed reading about all the different information that i am exposed to using analog versus digital.
Overal, I really enjoyed reading "The Nature of Information".

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The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges is very interesting. It talks about a universe in the form of a huge library containing every book possible. They are all 410 page books that can be composed with a certain amount of letters. Every book is different. I think that the point of the story is to show how large the information space is. There is so much information in this world and so many possibilities. The article was kind of difficult to read, but once i did, it really got me thinking. I found it very interesting.

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Ben Coulter
I101