4.1 Fundamental Formula of Information » Quiz Solutions
Question 1:
The formula for the number of sequences of m coin flips in which there are mh heads and mt tails is . Plugging in the values m=10 (there are 10 flips) and mh=7, mt=3 gives the number of sequences as .
By using a digital calculator (or simplifying in other ways), we can compute that ==.
Question 2:
From the video, remember the 'Fundamental formula of Information Theory’: , where q(h) is the probability of heads and q(t) is the probability of tails.
In this case, the probability of heads is q(h) = 0.6, so the probability of tails must be q(t) = 1-q(h) = 0.4. Substituting these probabilities into the above equation gives
I = -0.6 log2 0.6 - 0.4 log2 0.4 ≈ 0.97 bits
Question 3:
Again we can use the remember the 'Fundamental formula of Information Theory’, though now for more than two possibilities:,
where q(i) is the probability of possibility i.
If we have a fair six-sided die, then the probability of landing on each face is 1/6. Plugging this into the above equation gives
I = - 6 * (1/6) log2 (1/6) = - log2 (1/6) = log2 6 ≈ 2.58 bits
(Here we have used the logarithmic identity -log 1/x = log x).
More generally, this is a demonstration of how choosing one of N options with uniform probability generates log2 N bits of information.
Question 4:
We again use the 'Fundamental formula of Information Theory’,,
where q(i) is the probability of possibility i.
We know that q(1) = 0.4. That means that there remains 0.6 probability between the other 5 sides, so each of the remaining sides must have probability q(i) = 0.6/5 = 0.12 for i = 2...6.
Plugging these into the above formula gives
I = -0.4 log2 0.4 - 5*0.12 log2 0.12 ≈ 2.36 bits