An Axiomatic Characterization of Mutual Information

We characterize mutual information as the unique map on ordered pairs of discrete random variables satisfying a set of axioms similar to those of Faddeev’s characterization of the Shannon entropy. There is a new axiom in our characterization, however, which has no analog for Shannon entropy, based on the notion of a Markov triangle, which may be thought of as a composition of communication channels for which conditional entropy acts functorially. Our proofs are coordinate-free in the sense that no logarithms appear in our calculations.