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by lambdatronics
1519 days ago
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>I don't know what Entropy is supposed to mean on the level of individual states/configurations. The entropy is a property of a probability distribution, not of a state. Entropy is defined as H = -sum(p_i log(p_i)). A 'state' implicitly defines a probability distribution: uniform probability over all the microstates compatible with the state description.[0] In the case of a microstate, the entropy of the probability distribution over microstates consistent with that state is zero - there's only one compatible state, so p_i = 0 for all other states, and log(p_i) = 0 for the compatible state. In the case of a macrostate, the entropy of the probability distribution over microstates consistent with the macrostate works out to -sum((1/N) log(1/N)) = log(N), where N is the number of consistent microstates. That's the Boltzmann entropy. Sometimes people will write about the entropy of a 'state' in such a way that it sounds like they're talking about the entropy of a microstate -- but what they're probably talking about is "the entropy of the macrostate that this microstate belongs to." It's sloppy to talk like that, because "the" corresponding macrostate isn't unique. There are many sets of macrostates that could contain a microstate, depending on what properties of the microstates one considers 'macro.' (Ex: 10100101 is a member of both "symmetric bit strings of length 8" and "bit strings of length 8 that average to 1/2". The entropy of "symmetric bit strings of length 8" is 4 bits, whereas the entropy of "bit strings of length 8 that average to 1/2" is ~6.1 bits. And of course, the entropy of "the bit string of length 8 that is exactly 10100101" is zero.) |
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