[Discuss] vnc

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 05:12:32PM +0000, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote:
> > From: Dan Ritter [mailto:dsr at randomstring.org]
> > 
> > Even though I agree with all this, I have to point out that many
> > experiments have concluded that English sentences contain about 1.1 bits
> > of entropy per character, and so it is not completely unreasonable to
> > create and memorize a 120 character sentence to use as a password.
> 
> I wouldn't attempt to measure entropy on a per-character basis, unless you're randomly generating characters.  For example, if given the characters "charact" I bet you'll be able to predict the next character "e."  And if you're randomly selecting words, the number of characters are variable.  And if you're *non* randomly selecting words that are related to each other (such as a sentence) then the measurement of entropy becomes even more vague, and more variable.  Any estimate such as "1.1 bits per character" is very likely to be imprecise and inaccurate.

Shannon's experimental tests are reported and repeatable, and
have in fact been repeated several times.

If you google shannon entropy english sentences the first page
is all signal.

-dsr-