William Poundstone (1955) American writer
Part One, Entropy, Randomness, Disorder, Uncertainty, p. 57
Fortune's Formula (2005)
“My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.”
Scientific American (1971), volume 225, page 180.
Explaining why he named his uncertainty function "entropy".
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I deci…" by Claude Elwood Shannon?
Claude Elwood Shannon4
American mathematician and information theorist 1916–2001Related quotes
John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath
Suggesting to Claude Shannon a name for his new uncertainty function, as quoted in Scientific American Vol. 225 No. 3, (1971), p. 180.
Context: You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist
Part 3: "Feynman, The Bomb, and the Military", "Los Alamos from Below", p. 132
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist
Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 519: Partly cited in: E. Roy Weintraub (1992) Toward a history of game theory. p. 235
Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter
On her lifelong use of the name "Happy", in "The Happy Rhodes Interview" in Homeground #48 (Summer 1993) http://web.archive.org/web/20091023165015/http://geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/3450/homeground.html <br class="br">Context: The first time my brothers saw me, when I was a day or two old and still in the hospital, my brother Mark could not pronounce the name "Kimberley," and I was an especially happy baby, so he decided it would be easier to call me "Happy." From that moment on, my family members never used the name Kimberley. I was forced, however, to use my given name while attending school. As soon as I turned sixteen, my name was legally changed to Happy Tyler Rhodes. As far as I'm concerned, it's the ony name I've ever had. When people ask me if it's my real name, I always say "yes."
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist
Source: 1963 - 1967, What Is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters, Part 1 (1963), pp. 116-19
“Neither Dirac nor von Neumann discussed his measurements in physical terms.”
Willis Lamb (1913–2008) American Physicist
W. E. Lamb, Classical measurements on a quantum mechanical system, Nuclear Phys. B 6, 197-201 (1989).
