Entropy, information rate and mutual information measures for the email content of information workers

Although most people agree that the use of information technology increases workplace productivity, the exact relationship between productivity and different characteristics of information employees send and receive, such as entropy, information rate and mutual information is not very well studied. By using empirical data, this study develops methodologies to measure the entropy, information rate and mutual information of the email content exchanged between information workers. Furthermore, the validity of these methodologies is evaluated using comparable, publicly available datasets. The evaluation shows that important informational characteristics of email messages, namely the entropy values, are preserved even when messages undergo transformations that preserve privacy and anonymity.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Farrokhzadi, Meshkat

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Erik Brynjolfsson, Sinan Aral and Marshall Van Alstyne.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41643

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/41643