Talk:Entropic uncertainty

WikiProject Computing???
What, exactly, is the relevance of this article to computing? As far as entropy and computing go, Landauer's principle is much more relevant. I feel that this is much more a physics/math/information theory article. Moreover I would suggest changing the name to "Entropic uncertainty principle" since there were apparently more people than just Hirschman who worked on this, (his seminal paper of 1957 notwithstanding.) Deepmath (talk) 04:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Obviously misclassified.  Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 17:01, 24 May 2013 (UTC) It is now classified as Physics. Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 20:28, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces
Regarding edit that was reverted by Cuzkatzimhut; that's ok, there should be something substantial to say along these lines before putting it in the article anyway. That's just a few references. Consider for example the spin of an electron, measured in some arbitrary basis. It is either up or down in that basis—one bit—and no more information than that about the spin is available. Now we can choose to interpret that measurement as being partial information about the spin in the x- y- and z-axes, according to the orientation of the measurement axis. But the total uncertainty about the spin in all three axes is bounded below by an entropic uncertainty relation.
 * Hans Maassen and J. B. M. Uffink, Generalized entropic uncertainty relations Phys. Rev. Lett. 60, 1103 – Published 21 March 1988
 * Manuel A. Ballester and Stephanie Wehner Entropic uncertainty relations and locking: Tight bounds for mutually unbiased bases Phys. Rev. A 75, 022319 – Published 21 February 2007
 * Julio I. de Vicente and Jorge Sánchez-Ruiz Improved bounds on entropic uncertainty relations Phys. Rev. A 77, 042110 – Published 16 April 2008
 * GianCarlo Ghirardi, Luca Marinatto, Raffaele Romano, An optimal entropic uncertainty relation in a two-dimensional Hilbert space Physics Letters A Volume 317, Issues 1–2, 13 October 2003, Pages 32–36

I mention this because here the inequalities apply to discrete Shannon entropy, rather than differential entropy. As far as getting an account, I say "meh." 71.222.77.62 (talk) 01:12, 1 January 2015 (UTC)


 * The Massen and Uffink ref has been there as "Further reading", forever, no?--what am I missing? Why do you keep ignoring its presence and arguing for more prominence?  Any motivated reader would get to it, and the odd college student would make little of it. Finite Hilbert spaces are a recondite side area that might deserve a footnote or one liner if properly presented as a runaway footnote or further reading sectionlet. But this is an introductory, reader friendly encyclopedia, not a Habilitationsschrift or scholarpedia article, or even review article. If you asked me, I'd argue for sticking something relevant in the numerous WP articles on finite dimensional Hilbert spaces. In any case, what specific,  pithy, concise, one-liner add-on are you proposing, beyond a handful of references, that would make sense to an undergraduate? As for an account, (Why create an account?),  the point is someone else could use your IP and impersonate you, as things stand. Since everything "you" have ever said on WP stays in a permanent record for investigating, you may wish to take advantage of the authentication protection of an account, among other advantages.Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 11:41, 1 January 2015 (UTC)