BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

UNCERTAINTY (Measure of) 2)

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"The average number of binary decisions a decision maker has to make in order to select one out of a set of actually exclusive alternatives" (K. KRIPPENDORFF, 1986, p.77).

This number is the logarithm of the number of possible alternatives.

According to G. PASK: "Given a well-defined set of elements, it is possible to measure the amount of uncertainty with reference to this set. The reference frame provides a set of states, hence a measure of uncertainty is possible and is called the variety of the set. … Information and uncertainty, if expressed in an additive form as logarithmic measures, are very simply related indeed:

Uncertainty = –Information" (1961, p.26).

This is, of course, the quantitative aspect of uncertainty, based on the hypothese of a consensus on their data among the different observers. PASK himself has been quite concerned by this consensus problem.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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