The theory of informity: a novel probability framework

This paper proposes a novel probability framework, called the theory of informity. We define a mathematical quantity called "informity" to quantitatively measure the degree of informativeness of a probability distribution (or a probability system). We also define two other quantities: cross-informity and joint informity. We propose an informity metric that can be used as an alternative to entropy metric. The informities for twelve continuous distributions are given. Three examples are presented to demonstrate the practicability of the proposed informity metric.