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Cybernetic

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Biophysics

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Abstract

Ever since Shannon established the theory of statistical information in 1948 it has been possible to specify the “information content” or the amount of “information” of a message quantitatively. This is determined by the probability (expected probability) of the occurrence of the message. Frequently occurring messages then have a small information content and infrequently appearing messages a large information content. If p(xi) is the probability of a message (e.g., for the occurrence of a symbol x t of the information source), the corresponding information content I i is given by

$$I_i = \text{ld}\frac{\text{1}} {{p(x_i \text{)}}} = - \text{ld}\,\,p(x_i )$$
(1)

Id is the logarithm to base 2 and fixes the scale in such a way that a message with p = 0.5 shows an information content of I= 1 bit.

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Authors
  1. Horst Mittelstaedt
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  2. Hans Marko
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  3. Werner Reichardt
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  4. Anders Johnsson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie, Am Klopferspitz, D-8033, Martinsried, Germany

    Walter Hoppe

  2. Institut für Biophysik, Universität Gießen Strahlenzentrum, Leihgesterner Weg 217, D-6300, Gießen, Germany

    Wolfgang Lohmann

  3. Fakultät für Biologie, Universität Konstanz, Postfach 5560, D-7750, Konstanz, Germany

    Hubert Markl

  4. Institut für Botanik und Mikrobiologie, Technischen Universität München, Arcisstraße 21, D-8000, München 2, Germany

    Hubert Ziegler

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Mittelstaedt, H., Marko, H., Reichardt, W., Johnsson, A. (1983). Cybernetic. In: Hoppe, W., Lohmann, W., Markl, H., Ziegler, H. (eds) Biophysics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68877-5_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68877-5_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-68879-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-68877-5

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