Creating and sharing knowledge for telecommunications

A Measure of Synergy Based on Union Information

Gomes, A. ; Figueiredo, M. A. T.

Entropy Vol. 26, Nº 3, pp. 271 - 271, March, 2024.

ISSN (print):
ISSN (online): 1099-4300

Scimago Journal Ranking: 0,54 (in 2022)

Digital Object Identifier: 10.3390/e26030271

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Abstract
The partial information decomposition (PID) framework is concerned with decomposing the information that a set of (two or more) random variables (the sources) has about another variable (the target) into three types of information: unique, redundant, and synergistic. Classical information theory alone does not provide a unique way to decompose information in this manner and additional assumptions have to be made. One often overlooked way to achieve this decomposition is using a so-called measure of union information—which quantifies the information that is present in at least one of the sources—from which a synergy measure stems. In this paper, we introduce a new measure of union information based on adopting a communication channel perspective, compare it with existing measures, and study some of its properties. We also include a comprehensive critical review of characterizations of union information and synergy measures that have been proposed in the literature.