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THEORY OF COARSE-GRAINED INFORMATION

Hiroshi Watanabe
  • Abstract:
    Measurement should be objective in principle. However, the accuracy of measurement often depends on various factors, including instruments of measurement, adopted intentionally or made available accidentally, and from a practical point of view, it is important to choose a suitable degree of the accuracy of measurement for the intention of measurement. The present paper discusses some information-theoretical aspects of the relationship between the degree of the accuracy of nominal description of objects and the interdependence among groups of those objects within a formal framework of clustering, where a new entropic measure of interdependence is applied to estimate the change of the interdependence when the nominal description becomes more `coarse’ so that several objects appear to be identical, and are grouped into the same class. The degree of interdependence is often measured by (sum of entropies of partial systems) - (entropy of the whole). Close examination shows, however, that instead of simple formal entropy we should take rather (the number of the members of a group) × (entropy of the group). The result also implies that in integration of information channels the average entropy plays an important role. A brief discussion is also made on elicitation of so-called information granules.
  • Keywords:
    clustering, elicitation of information granule, interdependence analysis, measurement science, minimum average entropy
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  • DOI:
    _unreg_wc-2003.TC7-027

Event details:

  • IMEKO TC:
  • Event name:
    XVII IMEKO World Congress
  • Title:

    Metrology in the 3rd Millennium

  • Place:
    Dubrovnik, CROATIA
  • Time:
    22 June 2003 - 28 June 2003