Talk:Shannon index
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[edit] misleading
The introduction to this article gives the impression that the primary or even the only use of this function is measuring species diversity. What if there were an article titled "cardinal number" that said the purpose of cardinal numbers is enumeration of animals in a forest? The sequence {1, 2, ,3 ,...} is used for counting animals in forests; it is not used for counting anything else; it is known only to those who have studied the counting of animals in forests. That's all.
That's what this article does. Michael Hardy 23:33, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Nice analogy. But what else is the Shannon index used for Michael? I have only seen it used for species diversity measure. Stray 23:40, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
- The Shannon index seems identical to information entropy, which is used by many branches of math and engineering. I think Michael's point is that the article needs to say this. hike395 07:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Index name
At the start of the article, the index is referred to as the Shannon index; the other two variants are said to be wrong. The source for this is a 1989 work by Charles J. Krebs. In a newer work, however (CJ Krebs. Ecology: the experimental analysis of distribution and abundance, 5th edition. p617-618), the same author calls the index the Shannon-Wiener index. Is there other information that could be used to find the "correct" name for the index, if one exists? Jonht 09:35, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Data Ranges
What values of the index have been observed in nature? and what would be considered a high value (typical of an evenly diverse population)? Obviously the word high is subjective/arbitrary, but it would be nice to see some examples from the literature in this article. MATThematical (talk • contribs) 01:00, 11 May 2008
