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Randomness, Structure and Causality - Agenda

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Abstracts


The Vocabulary of Grammar-Based Codes and the Logical Consistency of Texts

Debowski, Lukasz (ldebowsk@ipipan.waw.pl)
Polish Academy of Sciences

We will present a new explanation for the distribution of words in natural language which is grounded in information theory and inspired by recent research in excess entropy. Namely, we will demonstrate a theorem with the following informal statement: If a text of length $n$ describes $n^\beta$ independent facts in a repetitive way then the text contains at least $n^\beta/\log n$ different words.  In the formal statement, two modeling postulates are adopted. Firstly, the words are understood as nonterminal symbols of the shortest grammar-based encoding of the text. Secondly, the text is assumed to be emitted by a finite-energy strongly nonergodic source whereas the facts are binary IID variables predictable in a shift-invariant way. Besides the theorem, we will exhibit a few stochastic processes to which this and similar statements can be related.

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