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1956-MagicNumberSeven-Miller

The "amount of information" is exactly the same concept that we have talked about for years under the name of "variance."

The equations are different, but if we hold tight to the idea that anything that increases the variance also increases the amount of information we cannot go far astray. The advantages of this new way of talking about variance are simple enough. Variance is always stated in terms of the unit of measurement - inches, pounds, volts, etc. - whereas the amount of information is a dimensionless quantity. Since the information in a discrete statistical distribution does not depend upon the unit of measurement, we can extend the concept to situations where we have no metric and we would not ordinarily think of using [p. 82] the variance. And it also enables us to compare results obtained in quite different experimental situations where it would be meaningless to compare variances based on different metrics. So there are some good reasons for adopting the newer concept.