10 Big Entropy and the Generalized Linear Model
Most readers of this book will share the experience of fighting with tangled electrical cords. Whether behind a desk or stuffed in a box, cords and cables tend toward tying themselves in knots. Why is this? There is of course real physics at work. But at a descriptive level, the reason is entropy: There are vastly more ways for cords to end up in a knot than for them to remain untied.160 So if I were to carefully lay a dozen cords in a box and then seal the box and shake it, we should bet that at least some of the cords will be tangled together when I again open the box. We don’t need to know anything about the physics of cords or knots. We just have to bet on entropy. Events that can happen ...
