4.5. info theory#

  • material from Cover “Elements of Information Theory”

4.5.1. overview#

  • with small number of points, estimated mutual information is too high

  • founded with claude shannon 1948

  • set of principles that govern flow + transmission of info

  • X is a R.V. on (finite) discrete alphabet ~ won’t cover much continuous

4.5.2. entropy, relative entropy, and mutual info#

4.5.2.1. entropy#

  • \(H(X) = - \sum p(x) \:\log p(x) = E[h(p)]\)

    • \(h(p)= - \log(p)\)

    • \(H(p)\) implies p is binary

    • usually for discrete variables only

    • assume 0 log 0 = 0

  • intuition

    • higher entropy \(\implies\) more uniform

    • lower entropy \(\implies\) more pure

    1. expectation of variable \(W=W(X)\), which assumes the value \(-log(p_i)\) with probability \(p_i\)

    2. minimum, average number of binary questions (like is X=1?) required to determine value is between \(H(X)\) and \(H(X)+1\)

    3. related to asymptotic behavior of sequence of i.i.d. random variables

  • properties

    • \(H(X) \geq 0\) since \(p(x) \in [0, 1]\)

    • funtion of distr. only, not the specific values the RV takes (the support of the RV)

    • gaussian has max entropy s.t. variance constraint

  • \(H(Y\|X)=\sum p(x) H(Y\|X=x) =- \sum_x p(x) \sum_y p(y|x) \log \: p(y|x)\)

    • \(H(X,Y)=H(X)+H(Y\|X) =H(Y)+H(X\|Y)\)

4.5.2.2. relative entropy / mutual info#

  • relative entropy = KL divergence - measures distance between 2 distributions

    • \[D(p\|\|q) = \sum_x p(x) log \frac{p(x)}{q(x)} = \mathbb E_p log \frac{p(X)}{q(X)} = \mathbb E_p[-\log q(X)] - H(p) \]
    • if we knew the true distribution p of the random variable, we could construct a code with average description length H(p).

    • If, instead, we used the code for a distribution q, we would need H(p) + D(p||q) bits on average to describe the random variable.

    • \(D(p\|\|q) \neq D(q\|\|p)\)

    • properties

      • nonnegative

      • not symmetric

  • mutual info I(X; Y): how much you can predict about one given the other

    • \(I(X; Y) = \sum_X \sum_y p(x,y) \log \frac{p(x,y)}{p(x) p(y)} = D(p(x,y)\|\|p(x) p(y))\)

    • \(I(X; Y) = -H(X,Y) + H(X) + H(Y))\)

      • \(=I(Y|X)\)

    • \(I(X; X) = H(X)\) so entropy sometimes called self-information

entropy-venn-diagram

  • cross-entropy: \(H_q(p) = -\sum_x p(x) \: \log \: q(x)\)

    Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 11.26.42 AM

4.5.2.3. chain rules#

  • entropy \(H(X_1, ..., X_n) = \sum_i H(X_i \| X_{i-1}, ..., X_1) = H(X_n \| X_{n-1}, ..., X_1) + ... + H(X_1)\)

  • conditional mutual info \(I(X; Y\|Z) = H(X\|Z) - H(X\|Y,Z)\)

    • \(I(X_1, ..., X_n; Y) = \sum_i I(X_i; Y\|X_{i-1}, ... , X_1)\)

  • conditional relative entropy \(D(p(y\|x) \|\| q(y\|x)) = \sum_x p(x) \sum_y p(y\|x) log \frac{p(y\|x)}{q(y\|x)}\)

    • \(D(p(x, y)\|\|q(x, y)) = D(p(x)\|\|q(x)) + D(p(y\|x)\|\|q(y\|x))\)

4.5.2.4. axiomatic approach#

  • fundamental theorem of information theory - it is possible to transmit information through a noisy channel at any rate less than channel capacity with an arbitrarily small probability of error

    • to achieve arbitrarily high reliability, it is necessary to reduce the transmission rate to the channel capacity

  • uncertainty measure axioms

    1. H(1/M,…,1/M)=f(M) is a montonically increasing function of M

    2. f(ML) = f(M)+f(L) where M,L \(\in \mathbb{Z}^+\)

    3. grouping axiom

    4. H(p,1-p) is continuous function of p

  • \(H(p_1,...,p_M) = - \sum p_i log p_i = E[h(p_i)]\)

    • \(h(p_i)= - log(p_i)\)

    • only solution satisfying above axioms

    • H(p,1-p) has max at 1/2

  • lemma - Let \(p_1,...,p_M\) and \(q_1,...,q_M\) be arbitrary positive numbers with \(\sum p_i = \sum q_i = 1\). Then \(-\sum p_i log p_i \leq - \sum p_i log q_i\). Only equal if \(p_i = q_i \: \forall i\)

    • intuitively, \(\sum p_i log q_i\) is maximized when \(p_i=q_i\), like a dot product

  • \(H(p_1,...,p_M) \leq log M\) with equality iff all \(p_i = 1/M\)

  • \(H(X,Y) \leq H(X) + H(Y)\) with equality iff X and Y are independent

  • \(I(X,Y)=H(Y)-H(Y\|X)\)

  • sometimes allow p=0 by saying 0log0 = 0

  • information \(I(x)=log_2 \frac{1}{p(x)}=-log_2p(x)\)

  • reduction in uncertainty (amount of surprise in the outcome)

  • if the probability of event happening is small and it happens the info is large

    • entropy \(H(X)=E[I(X)]=\sum_i p(x_i)I(x_i)=-\sum_i p(x_i)log_2 p(x_i)\)

  • information gain \(IG(X,Y)=H(Y)-H(Y\|X)\)

    • \(=-\sum_j p(x_j) \sum_i p(y_i\|x_j) log_2 p(y_i\|x_j)\)

  • parts

    1. random variable X taking on \(x_1,...,x_M\) with probabilities \(p_1,...,p_M\)

    2. code alphabet = set \(a_1,...,a_D\) . Each symbol \(x_i\) is assigned to finite sequence of code characters called code word associated with \(x_i\)

    3. objective - minimize the average word length \(\sum p_i n_i\) where \(n_i\) is average word length of \(x_i\)

  • code is uniquely decipherable if every finite sequence of code characters corresponds to at most one message

    • instantaneous code - no code word is a prefix of another code word

4.5.3. basic inequalities#

4.5.3.1. jensen’s inequality#

  • convex - function lies below any chord

    • has positive 2nd deriv

    • linear functions are both convex and concave

  • Jensen’s inequality - if f is a convex function and X is an R.V., \(f(E[X]) \leq E[f(X)]\)

    • if f strictly convex, equality \(\implies X=E[X]\)

  • implications

    • information inequality \(D(p\|\|q) \geq 0\) with equality iff p(x)=q(x) for all x

    • \(H(X) \leq log \|X\|\) where |X| denotes the number of elements in the range of X, with equality if and only X has a uniform distr

    • \(H(X\|Y) \leq H(X)\) - information can’t hurt

    • \(H(X_1, ..., X_n) \leq \sum_i H(X_i)\)

4.5.4. mdl#

  • chapter 1: overview

    • explain data given limited observations

    • benefits

      • occam’s razor

      • no overfitting (can pick both form of model and params), without need for ad hoc penalties

      • bayesian interpretation

      • no need for underlying truth

    • description - in terms of some description method

      • e.g. a python program which prints a sequence then halts = Kolmogorov complexity

        • invariance thm - as long as sequence is long enough, choice of programming language doesn’t matter) - (kolmogorov 1965, chaitin 1969, solomonoff 1964)

        • not computable in general

        • for small samples in practice, depends on choice of programming language

      • in practice, we don’t use general programming languages but rather select a description method which we know we can get the length of the shortest description in that class (e.g. linear models)

        • trade-off: we may fail to minimally compress some sequences which have regularity

      • knowing data-generating process can help compress (e.g. recording times for something to fall from a height, generating digits of \(\pi\) via taylor expansion, compressing natural language based on correct grammar)

    • simplest version - let \(\theta\) be the model and \(X\) be the data

      • 2-part MDL: minimize \(L(\theta) + L(X|\theta)\)

        • \(L(X|\theta) = - \log P(X|\theta)\) - Shannon code

        • \(L(\theta)\) - hard to get this, basic problem with 2-part codes

          • have to do this for each model, not model-class (e.g. different linear models with same number of parameters would have different \(L(\theta)\)

      • stochastic complexity (“refined mdl”): \(\bar{L}(X|\theta)\) - only construct one code

        • ex. \(\bar L(X|\theta) = |\theta|_0 + L(X|\theta)\) - like 2-part code but breaks up \(\theta\) space into different sets (e.g. same number of parameters) and assigns them equal codelength

      • normalized maximum likelihood - most recent version - select from among a set of codes

  • chapter 2.2.1 background

    • in mdl, we only work with prefix codes (i.e. no codeword is a prefix of any other codeword)

      • these are uniquely decodable

      • in fact, any uniquely decodable code can be rewritten as a prefix code which achieves the same code length

  • chapter 2.2.2: probability mass functions correspond to codelength functions

    • coding: \(x \sim P(X)\), codelengths \(\ell(x)\)

      • Kraft inequality: \(\sum_x 2^{-\ell(x)} \leq 1\)

    • given a code \(C\) and a prob distr. \(P\), we can construct a code so short codewords get high probs and vice versa

      • given \(P\), \(\exists C, \forall z \: L_C(z) \leq \lceil -\log P(z) \rceil\)

      • given \(C'\), \(\exists P' \: \forall z -\log P(z) = L_{C'}(z)\)

  • we redefine codelength so it doesn’t require actual integer lengths

    • we don’t care about the actual encodings, only the codelengths

    • given a sample space \(\mathcal Z\), the set of all codelength functions \(L_\mathcal Z\) is the set of functions \(L\) on \(\mathcal Z\) where \(\exists \,Q\) (distr), such that \(\sum_z Q(z) \leq 1\) and \(\forall z,\; L(z) = -\log Q(z)\)

    • uniform distr. - every codeword just has same length (fixed-length)

    • we usually assume we are encoding a sequence \(x^n\) which is large, so the rounding becomes negligible

    • ex. encoding integers: send \(\log k\) zeros, then add a 1, then uniform code from 0 to \(2^{\log k}\)

    • Given \(P(X)\), the codelength function \(L(X) = -\log P(X)\) minimizes expected code length for the variable \(X\)

  • chapter 2.2.3 - the information inequality: \(E_P[-\log Q(X)] > E_P[-\log P(X)]\)

    • if \(X\) was generated by \(P\), then codes with length \(-\log P(X)\) give the shortest encodings on average

    • not surprising - in a large sample, X will occur with frequency proportial to \(P(X)\), so we want to give it a short codelength \(-\log P(X)\)

    • consequently, ideal mean length = \(H(X)\)

  • chapter 2.4: crude mdl ex. pick order of markov chain by minimizing \(L(H) + L(D|H)\) where \(D\) is data, \(H\) is hypothesis

    • we get to pick codes for \(L(H)\) and \(L(D|H)\)

    • let \(L(x^n|H) = -\log P(x^n|H)\) (length of data is just negative log-likelihood)

    • for \(L(H)\), describe length of chain \(k\) with code for integers, then \(k\) parameters between 0 and 1 by describing the counts generated by the params in n samples - this tends to be harder to do well

  • chapter 2.5: universal codes + models

    • note: these codes are only universal relative to the set of considered codes \(\mathcal L\)

    • universal model - prob. distr corresponding to universal codes

      • (different from how we use model in statistics)

    • given a set of codes \(\mathcal L = \{ L_1, L_2, ... \}\), given a squences \(x^n\), one of the codes \(L \in \mathcal L\) has the shortest length for that sequence \(\bar L(x^n)\)

      • however, we have to pick one \(L\), before we see \(x^n\)

    • universal code - one code such that no matter which \(x^n\) arrives, length is not much longer than the shortest length among all considered codes

      • ex. 2-part codes: first send bits to pick among codes, then use the selected code to encode \(x^n\) - overhead is small because it doesn’t depend on \(n\)

      • among countably infinite codes, can still send \(k\) to index the code, although \(k\) can get very large

      • ex. bayesian universal model - assign prior distr to codes

    • ex. nml is an optimal (minimizes worst-case regret) universal model

      • \(\bar P_{\text{nml}} (x^n) = \frac{P(x^n | \hat \theta (x^n))}{\sum_{z^n \in \mathcal X^n} P(z^n | \hat \theta (z^n))}\)

      • literally a normalized likelihood

      • regret of \(\bar P\) relative to \(M\): \(−\log \bar P(x^n)− \min_{P \in M} -\log P(x^n )\)

        • measures the performance of universal models relative to a set of candidate sources M

        • \(\bar P\) is a probability distribution on \(\mathcal X^n\) (\(P\) is not necessarily in \(M\))

        • when evaluating a code, we may look at the worst regret over all \(x^n\), or the average