“Theoretical physicist Edwin T. Jaynes, who died in 1998, is best known as pioneer and champion of the principle of maximum entropy, which states that of all possible probability distributions that agree with what you know about a problem, the one that leaves you with the most uncertainty is best—precisely because it does not imply more than you know. As important as the principle is in practice, surprisingly little space is devoted to it in Jaynes’s magnum opus, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science.” Book review by Tommaso Toffoli here in American Scientist Online.
