6 ms·

Nah, nothing like that, "entropy" in the colloquial meaning of level of disorder, it has proven to be a useful word for people to understand what it is about, e

Nah, nothing like that, "entropy" in the colloquial meaning of level of disorder, it has proven to be a useful word for people to understand what it is about, even though it's strictly incorrect.

carrolldunham 3y ago
please don't do that, especially when presenting something that uses graphs, as entropy on graphs is an actual technical concept that's currently widely used in very hot fields.
contravariant 3y ago
This might be the first time someone used the word "entropy" colloquially in the hopes that it is generally well understood what it means. To me the usage makes no sense whatsoever, there's no entropy to be found here, and if there is it's not what is being displayed. Perhaps it makes sense to people who don't know what entropy is, though most of them wouldn't know the word in the first place.
- voidhorse 3y ago
  Same here. My first reaction to this was "how does this compute entropy at all"? Also, entropy and complexity are two different, if related, concepts, both mathematically and colloquially speaking. It's abuse of technical language in efforts to sound impressive, in my opinion, which I guess is a valid form of language evolution. There are other words in our lexicon that have become general purpose and fuzzy in spite of their precise technical origins.
voidhorse 3y ago
Why not simply say "disorder" then and: a. avoid making certain subsets of people think you're using precise concepts that you aren't. b. make it easier for people that don't know what entropy even is to understand what this tool does. Disorder is a far more widely understood term in my view.
ngneer 3y ago
Great tool for visualizing complexity and dependencies. Entropy is the wrong term, though. For me (and likely many others) it conjures Shannon's seminal definition as an information measure. Entropy is a number.
gabimtme 3y ago
Thanks for the feedback y'all, I'll take this into account going forward

Nah, nothing like that, "entropy" in the colloquial meaning of level of disorder, it has proven to be a useful word for people to understand what it is about, even though it's strictly incorrect.

carrolldunham 3y ago

please don't do that, especially when presenting something that uses graphs, as entropy on graphs is an actual technical concept that's currently widely used in very hot fields.

contravariant 3y ago

This might be the first time someone used the word "entropy" colloquially in the hopes that it is generally well understood what it means. To me the usage makes no sense whatsoever, there's no entropy to be found here, and if there is it's not what is being displayed. Perhaps it makes sense to people who don't know what entropy is, though most of them wouldn't know the word in the first place.

voidhorse 3y ago
Same here. My first reaction to this was "how does this compute entropy at all"? Also, entropy and complexity are two different, if related, concepts, both mathematically and colloquially speaking. It's abuse of technical language in efforts to sound impressive, in my opinion, which I guess is a valid form of language evolution. There are other words in our lexicon that have become general purpose and fuzzy in spite of their precise technical origins.

voidhorse 3y ago

Why not simply say "disorder" then and: a. avoid making certain subsets of people think you're using precise concepts that you aren't. b. make it easier for people that don't know what entropy even is to understand what this tool does. Disorder is a far more widely understood term in my view.

ngneer 3y ago

Great tool for visualizing complexity and dependencies. Entropy is the wrong term, though. For me (and likely many others) it conjures Shannon's seminal definition as an information measure. Entropy is a number.

gabimtme 3y ago

Thanks for the feedback y'all, I'll take this into account going forward