1. The problem is to understand if Shannon entropy can be calculated using counts without probabilities. 2. Shannon entropy is defined as $$H = -\sum_{i} p_i \log_2 p_i$$ where $p_i$ is the probability of the $i$-th event. 3. Probabilities $p_i$ are usually calculated from counts by dividing each count by the total number of counts: $$p_i = \frac{n_i}{N}$$ where $n_i$ is the count of event $i$ and $N = \sum_i n_i$ is the total count. 4. Without converting counts to probabilities, you cannot directly calculate Shannon entropy because the formula requires probabilities. 5. However, you can calculate entropy from counts by first converting counts to probabilities as shown above. 6. In summary, Shannon entropy requires probabilities, but these probabilities can be derived from counts by normalizing them. Final answer: Shannon entropy cannot be calculated directly from counts without converting them to probabilities first.