Producing, Storing, Transporting, and Using Knowledge

Abstract

The entropy formulas of information theory are not relevant to the cost of obtaining knowledge nor to its value in use. But they are relevant to the expected number of symbols needed for, and hence to the cost of, storing and transmitting messages, especially in long sequences. This is analogous to the cost of storing and transporting material commodities, depending as it does on their weight or volume; while a commodity's production cost, and its value in use, depend on other factors. To increase the order of an aggregate is to decrease the number of its distinct possible states. This decreases the expected number of symbols needed to identify a state, and thus decreases the entropy.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1970
Accession Number
AD0715638

Entities

People

  • Jacob Marschak

Organizations

  • University of California, Los Angeles

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Coding
  • Commodities
  • Communication Channels
  • Communication Systems
  • Costs
  • Decision Theory
  • Decoding
  • Economics
  • Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Information Theory
  • Probability
  • Probability Distributions
  • Sequences
  • Statistical Decision Theory
  • Symbols
  • Transmitting

Readers

  • Approximation Theory.
  • Logistics and Supply Chain Management.
  • Systems Analysis and Design