[FRIAM] Entropy RE-redux

[Marcus Daniels]

George can do it. 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, June 15, 2025 at 11:59 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Entropy RE-redux 

Marcus, 



Thanks for checking in. I think I can safely say that that is a thing I will probably never do, but you have reminded me that I ought to see if somebody has already done it in NetLogo. 



I am sorry that my original post was garbled. Here is an ungarbled version: 


Same setup as before. Cylinder with two plungers and a peggable slider at dead center. Lets fill our compartments with bbs of the same volume. Unpeg the divider. Now let's tap on the two opposite plungers with a series of blows of the same average magnitude but different skew in the distribution of magnitudes: a normal distribution for the left half, and a highly positive skewed distribution on the right. Will the divider move? 

As I think about it, I begin to wonder what is the best measure of central tendency to use in making a prediction. Am I correct that if it is the arithmatic mean, the barrier does not move, and if it is the root mean square, it does? How on earth would I decide which measure to move; I suppose we could look and see what happens to the bbs. 



Nick 



On Sun, Jun 15, 2025 at 1:25 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote: 

Can you make this more fun and ask George or your favorite virtual correspondent for a Python or Mathematica implementation? Then we’d have something definite to debug. 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2025 8:27 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] Entropy RE-redux 


Same setup as before. Cylinder with two plungers and a peggable slider at dead center. Lets fill our compartments with bbs of the same volume. Unpeg the divider. Now lets tap on the two opposite plungers with a series of blows of the same average magnitude but different but different positive skew in the distribution of magnitudes. Will the divider move? 

-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson 

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology 

Clark University 

nthompson at clarku.edu <mailto:nthompson at clarku.edu> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson> 






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-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson 

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology 

Clark University 

nthompson at clarku.edu <mailto:nthompson at clarku.edu> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson> 



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