Analysis of an information-theoretic model for communication

DOI10.1088/1742-5468/2012/12/P12022MaRDI QIDQ3301328zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Nicholas R. Moloney, Eduardo G. Altmann, Ronald Dickman

Publication date 11 August 2020

Published in Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.0238

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Communication theory (94A05) Information theory (general) (94A15)

Abstract: We study the cost-minimization problem posed by Ferrer i Cancho and Sol'e in their model of communication that aimed at explaining the origin of Zipf's law [PNAS 100, 788 (2003)]. Direct analysis shows that the minimum cost is $minlambda,1-lambda$, where $lambda$ determines the relative weights of speaker's and hearer's costs in the total, as shown in several previous works using different approaches. The nature and multiplicity of the minimizing solution changes discontinuously at $lambda=1/2$, being qualitatively different for $lambda<1/2$, $lambda>1/2$, and $lambda=1/2$. Zipf's law is found only in a vanishing fraction of the minimum-cost solutions at $lambda=1/2$ and therefore is not explained by this model. Imposing the further condition of equal costs yields distributions substantially closer to Zipf's law, but significant differences persist. We also investigate the solutions reached by the previously used minimization algorithm and find that they correctly recover global minimum states at the transition.

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Cites work

• A Mathematical Theory of Communication
• Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language
• The evolutionary dynamics of the lexical matrix

Cited in

(6)

• Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4211960 (Why is no real title available?)
• A scaling law beyond Zipf's law and its relation to heaps' law
• On the origin of ambiguity in efficient communication
• Mathematical models of textual data: a short review
• A Model of Positive and Negative Information in thé Standard Framework of Communication Theory — Application to Encoding

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