Differential entropy of a Gaussian law

ID: differential-entropy-of-a-gaussian-law

For a normal distribution with mean and positive variance , expand the logarithm of its probability density function:
The second term has expected value , hence . Translation of the mean has no effect, while shrinking the standard deviation lowers differential entropy. A standard normal distribution has approximately nats. This connects the continuous spread calculation with entropy power, whose normalization matches a Gaussian distribution's variance.

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