熵在数据与机器学习中应用广泛,是刻画概率分布的强大工具。
Applications of Entropy in Data Analysis and Machine Learning: A Review
- 以香农和金希钦公理为基础,系统梳理熵的数学定义与性质
- 涵盖玻尔兹曼、冯诺依曼、柯尔莫哥洛夫-西奈等经典熵及其变体
- 适合对信息论、统计学习或复杂系统感兴趣的读者
自19世纪热力学起源以来,熵的概念已渗透至物理学与数学诸多领域,包括经典与量子统计力学、信息论、概率论、遍历理论及动力系统理论。本文聚焦经典熵:玻尔兹曼-吉布斯熵、冯诺依曼熵、香农熵、柯尔莫哥洛夫-西奈熵与拓扑熵。尽管名称各异,这些熵共享一个核心特性:在各自领域理论与应用中发挥关键作用。随着发展,众多针对特定目的提出的熵概念相继出现,统称为“熵”。本文综述其在数据科学与机器学习中的应用,强调熵对有限状态过程或符号化信号生成的概率质量分布的优异刻画能力。基于香农与金希钦的公理化框架,选取代表性熵类,展示其在数据分析与机器学习中的强大适应性与多样性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Since its origin in the thermodynamics of the 19th century, the concept of entropy has also permeated other fields of physics and mathematics, such as Classical and Quantum Statistical Mechanics, Information Theory, Probability Theory, Ergodic Theory and the Theory of Dynamical Systems. Specifically, we are referring to the classical entropies: the Boltzmann-Gibbs, von Neumann, Shannon, Kolmogorov-Sinai and topological entropies. In addition to their common name, which is historically justified (as we briefly describe in this review), other commonality of the classical entropies is the important role that they have played and are still playing in the theory and applications of their respective fields and beyond. Therefore, it is not surprising that, in the course of time, many other instances of the overarching concept of entropy have been proposed, most of them tailored to specific purposes. Following the current usage, we will refer to all of them, whether classical or new, simply as entropies. Precisely, the subject of this review is their applications in data analysis and machine learning. The reason for these particular applications is that entropies are very well suited to characterize probability mass distributions, typically generated by finite-state processes or symbolized signals. Therefore, we will focus on entropies defined as positive functionals on probability mass distributions and provide an axiomatic characterization that goes back to Shannon and Khinchin. Given the plethora of entropies in the literature, we have selected a representative group, including the classical ones. The applications summarized in this review finely illustrate the power and versatility of entropy in data analysis and machine learning.
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