News You Can Bruise for 2006 January 8 (entry 0)

(5) Sun Jan 08 2006 22:07 PST Thought Experiment: Which single Unicode character would convey the most information, say, on a sign?

Comments:

Posted by Nick Moffitt at Mon Jan 09 2006 02:10

Well, I'd go for the kanji with the most complicated meaning, but a sign is context-dependent. Most of the information conveyed comes from the surroundings.

Posted by Leonard at Mon Jan 09 2006 02:14

If there were a symbol whose information context was greatly boosted by a tiny bit of context it would be a strong contender.

Posted by Leonard at Mon Jan 09 2006 02:22

Er, "information content". Not doing so well tonight.

Posted by pedro at Mon Jan 09 2006 10:14

The sign is "WARNING: i CROSSING" and it is outside a math building. It has both complex internal meaning and context.

Posted by Jack Masters at Wed Jan 11 2006 13:24

I remember I once determined what unicode symbol had the longest name, it was one of the double arrows... I forget which one. I'd look through them, but I'm too lazy to find a big table of them to look through.