Over spring break, the Helmholtz paper [PDF] has finished. (Posted now on “On Helmholtz free energy for finite abstract simplicial complexes”.) As I will have little time during the rest of the semester, it got thrown out now. It is an interesting story, relating to one of the greatest scientist, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894). It is probably one of the … ….
Energy U and Entropy S are fundamental functionals on a simplicial complex equipped with a probability measure. Gibbs free energy U-S combines them and should lead to interesting minima.
Entropy is the most important functional in probability theory, Euler characteristic is the most important functional in topology. Similarly as the twins Apollo and Artemis displayed above they are closely related. Introduction This blog mentions some intriguing analogies between entropy and combinatorial notions. One can push the analogy in an other direction and compare random variables with simplicial complexes, Shannon … ….
