Calculate Shannon Entropy

shannon calculates the Shannon Entropy of a vector. The entropy quantifies the expected value of the information contained in a vector.

shannon(vec, data = NULL, base = 2)

Arguments

vec	The vector for which the Shannon Entropy is to be calculated. This is either a vector saved as object or a row of the neighbors data frame or matrix. If a row of a data frame or matrix is specified, this row is excluded as competitor for the nearest neighbor (as a row will be closest to itself).
data	A data frame object or matrix.
base	Base of the logarithm to be used, defaults to 2.

Author

D. Schmitz

Examples

### a vector saved as object

vector <- runif(50, 0, 10)

shannon(vec = vector)
#> [1] 5.394103

shannon(vec = vector, base = 10)
#> [1] 1.623787


### a vector specified by its name & its matrix

data("gdsm_mat")

shannon(vec = "var12", data = gdsm_mat)
#> [1] 5.498843

shannon(vec = "var12", data = gdsm_mat, base = 10)
#> [1] 1.655317