No label defined (Q4939586)

The aim of the paper is to investigate the independence of multiple events and to represent it on the basis of event entropies. As it is known, to define the mutual independence of \(n\) (random) events there are needed \(2^n-n-1\) equations. Using the entropies of events, the authors develop a necessary and sufficient condition for the mutual independence of \(n\) events, and succeed to prove that events are mutually independent if and only if their entropies are additive. The consequences of this result are interesting: The \(2^n-n-1\) equations expressing the mutual independence of the \(n\) events reduce to a single one equation, namely the additivity of entropy. This condition gives also an intuitive explanation of the mutual independence: events are independent whether the information gained by knowing one more event is added to the information of the other events.