Characterizations of Shannon and Rényi Entropy

These are my slides and abstract:

• Tobias Fritz, Characterizations of Shannon and Rényi entropy.

Abstract.  Measures of information like Shannon entropy and Rényi entropy have found widespread use in biology. But they are defined in terms of complicated-looking formulas, and the question arises: why do these quantities take these particular forms? Or should we really be using other measures of information defined differently? In this talk, I will approach these questions by explaining some of the special properties enjoyed by Shannon and Rényi entropy and discussing how these properties single out the Shannon and Rényi entropies among other measures of information.

It was a whole lot of fun to prepare!