ENTROPY AND PREDICTABILITY OF INFORMATION CARRIERS

The structure of linear strings carrying information is investigated b y means of entropy concepts. First conditional entropy and transinform ation are introduced and several generalizations are discussed. The ca pability to describe the structure of information carriers as DNA, pro teins, texts and musical strings is investigated. The relation between order and the predictability of informational strings is discussed. A s examples we study the mutual information function of virus DNA and s everal long proteins. Further we show some (rather formal) analogies t o the structure of texts, and strings generated by musical melodies. I t is shown that several information carriers show long-range correlati ons. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.