[Discuss] vnc

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 09:33:26PM +0000, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote:
> > From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> > bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Dan Ritter
> > 
> > Shannon's experimental tests are reported and repeatable, and
> > have in fact been repeated several times.
> 
> My puzzle was 139 characters long, I completed it in 380 total guesses and 241 incorrect guesses.  The measured Shannon entropy was 1.95 bits per character.

You're interpreting it incorrectly. The estimator method gives an upper
bound on Shannon entropy, not a precise measurement. Note that the larger
the number of experiments, the smaller the figure becomes, until people
have converged on 1.1 bits per character.

Suppose we play the game, and I think of a phrase, and you say
"the magic word is squeamish ossifrage", and purely by chance,
that is what I was thinking of. Is the entropy zero?

-dsr-