Uncertainty Measured

As a matter of fact, at least in the discrete types of cases we are currently considering, it would be possible to use the degree of a node, the number of paths fanning out from it, as a measure of uncertainty at that point.  That would give us a multiplicative measure of uncertainty rather than the sorts of additive measures we are more used to thinking about — no doubt someone would eventually think of taking logarithms to bring measures back to familiar ground — but that is getting ahead of the story.

To illustrate how multiplicative measures of multiplicity, variety, or uncertainty would work out, let us take up a simpler example, one where the main choice point has a degree of four.  Figure 3 gives us the picture.

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