Surprise

Henry, O

. his plots characterized by unexpected dénouements. [Am. Lit.: Benét, 457]

Operation Z

Japanese plan for Pearl Harbor attack. [Jap. Hist.: Toland, 177–178, 183–187]

Pearl Harbor

site of surprise attack on American fleet by the Japanese (December 7, 1941). [Am. Hist.: Fuller, III, 455–456]

thief in the night

analogy to the Lord’s unexpected coming. [N.T.: I Thessalonians 5:2]

truffle

indicates the unexpected. [Flower Symbolism: Flora Symbolica, 178]

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

So entropy measures the 'surprisal' or--perhaps more specifically--the importance of an event (8) for the receiver; that is to say, it is the measure of deviations from his expectations, and the measure of surprisal of the receiver is correlated to the selections of the source.

On the entropy of social systems: a revision of the concepts of entropy and energy in the social context

Information theory, first devised in 1948 by Claude Shannon, sees information and uncertainty as numerical quantities, measured in 'bits', that correspond with the extent to which the recipient of a message is surprised by that message ('surprisal').

New study applies existing theory to predict floods

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