We introduce two important concepts from shannons information theory. Scientific knowledge grows at a phenomenal pacebut few books have had as lasting an impact or played as important a role in our modern world as the mathematical theory of communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory in the bell system technical journal more than fifty years ago. Its impact has been crucial to the success of the voyager missions to deep space. Information theory a tutorial introduction o information. An informal introduction to the history of ideas and people associated with information theory. A history, a theory, a flood by james gleick, an introduction to. As with previous books by the author, this book aims at a clear and mysteryfree presentation of the central concept in information theory the shannon s measure of information. It assumes little prior knowledge and discusses both information with respect to discrete and continuous random variables.
A textbook starting with shannons entropy and going through conditional entropy and mutual information is sought. Worth the investment of time and stands in as a shannon biography to boot. Because shannons theory explores the electronic transmission of mes sages, it might seem appropriate to discuss it in the context of mass media the ories. He showed that it is quite redundant, using more symbols and words than necessary to convey messages. An introduction to information theory audiobook by john. It starts with the basics of telling you what information is and is not. The book by shannon and weaver 1949 is the classic. Mar 17, 20 shannon also proved that, given a certain number of states, the entropy of the distribution of states is maximized when all states are equally likely. Shannon is rightfully the main character of this historical saga gleick inserts biographical snippets of him and other main character throughout the book. From claude shannon s 1948 paper, a mathematical theory of communication, which proposed the use of binary digits for coding information. This book goes further, bringing in bayesian data modelling. Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone.
What are some standard bookspapers on information theory. Aug 05, 2014 the entire science of information theory grew out of one electrifying paper that shannon published in 1948, when he was a 32yearsold. Developed by claude shannon and norbert wiener in the late 1940s, information theory, or statistical communication theory, deals with the theoretical underpinnings of a wide range of communication devices. Gallager, information theory and reliable communication, wiley, 1968.
Reza written for an engineering audience, this book has a threefold purpose. An introduction to information theory audiobook by john r. Retinal function, excellent lecture on the energy cost of shannon information in. Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics, electrical engineering, and computer science which originated primarily in the work of claude shannon and his colleagues in the 1940s. This is the website for ece 587, duke university, fall semester 2012. Information theory was not just a product of the work of claude shannon.
Information, communication, and information theory. Apr 30, 2016 shannons information theory t his equation was published in the 1949 book the mathematical theory of communication, cowritten by claude shannon and warren weaver. A basis for such a theory is contained in the important papers of nyquist1 and. It was the result of crucial contributions made by many distinct individuals, from a variety of backgrounds, who took his ideas and expanded upon them. With the fundamental new discipline of quantum information science now under construction, its a good time to look back at an extraordinary. Topics of current appropriateness include extensions of information theories of shannon and wiener and their ramifications, analyses and design of communication systems, information sources, pattern recognition, receiving and detection, automata and learning, largescale information processing systems, and so forth. Quite honestly, im tending toward the goodreads consensus of four stars, leaning to a. A tutorial introduction is a highly readable first account of shannon s mathematical theory of communication, now known as information theory. Marinescu, in classical and quantum information, 2012. We will not attempt in the continuous case to obtain our results with the greatest generality, or with the extreme. Information theory and reliable communication by robert gallager and. This book is very specifically targeted to problems in communications and compression by providing the fundamental principles and results in information theory.
It is a theory that has been extrapolated into thermal physics, quantum computing, linguistics, and even plagiarism detection. Information theory studies the quantification, storage, and communication of information. I did not read them shame on me, so i cant say if theyre good or not. Claude shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the information age possible. In information theory, shannons source coding theorem or noiseless coding theorem establishes the limits to possible data compression, and the operational meaning of the shannon entropy named after claude shannon, the source coding theorem shows that in the limit, as the length of a stream of independent and identicallydistributed random variable i. Information theory a tutorial introduction o information theory. For further reading, here are some other readings that my professor did recommend. Shannon and information theory by nasrullah mambrol on july 29, 2018 0 claude e. While the jones 2 book does not provide a basket full of lemmas and deep insight for doing research on quantifying information, it is a very accessible, tothepoint and selfcontained survey of the main theorems of information theory, and therefore, imo, a good place to start. The present lovely little book appeared first in 1965, but is still very relevant.
The life and work of information theorys founding father. Which is the best introductory book for information theory. I appreciated how the author spends time clarifying some. The goal was to find the fundamental limits of communication operations and signal processing through an operation like data compression. In a famously brief book, shannon prefaced his account of information theory for continuous variables with these words. Scientific american called it the magna carta of the information age. Masters thesis, massachusetts institute of technology. Coming to the best books on information theory elements of information theory by thomas cover is a well written and widely followed book across the globe. This book is an excellent introduction to the mathematics underlying the theory.
Information theory 49 originated with shannon and weavermessage fidelity, multiple channels, infor mation loss, source credibility, and feedback. Shannon then proceeds to define a quantitative measure of information, as he realizes that the amount of information in some message must be tied up in the design of the machine which could be used to generate similarlooking sequences. I found this book to be clear and effective in helping me understand information theory. You can use the internet without understanding any of claude shannons work. A history, a theory, a flood is a book written in 2011 by james gleick. But while information theorys offspring have been plentiful, its pure form has no obvious calling card. Discover the best information theory in best sellers. This book is very specifically targeted to problems in communications and compression by providing the fundamental principles and results in information theory and rate distortion theory for these. It assumes little prior knowledge and discusses both information with respect to. Shannon s publication of a mathematical theory of communication in the bell system technical journal of july and october 1948 marks the beginning of information theory and can be considered the magna carta of the information age verdu. How claude shannon invented the information age hardcover. The 100 best information theory books recommended by jeff atwood, andrew chen.
A tutorial introduction is a highly readable first account of shannons mathematical theory of communication, now known as information theory. Claude shannon first proposed the information theory in 1948. What are some good books on information theory and its. An introduction to information theory continues to be the most impressive nontechnical account available and a fascinating introduction to. Shannon introduced the notion of the average mutual information between the two processes.
This task will allow us to propose, in section 10, a formal reading of the concept of shannon information, according to which the epistemic and the physical views are different possible models of the formalism. Shannon information theory an overview sciencedirect. We introduce two important concepts from shannon s information theory. This book presents the fundamental concepts of information theory in a friendlysimple language and is devoid of all kinds of fancy and pompous statements made by. In 1973, he recalled, he persuaded shannon to give the first annual shannon lecture at the international information theory symposium, but shannon almost backed out at the last minute. The first is, naturally, claude shannons formulation of his information theory. I am studying the book elements of information theory thomas m. Information theory a tutorial introduction is a thrilling foray into the world of information theory by james v stone.
One of the few accounts of shannons role in the development of information theory. Presumably, this redundancy is used by us to improve our ability to recognize messages reliably and to communicate different types of information. Originally developed by claude shannon in the 1940s, information theory laid. From the start, shannons landmark paper, a mathematical theory of communication, demonstrated that he had digested what was most incisive from the pioneers of information science.
Shannons information theory had a profound impact on our understanding of the concepts in communication. It was originally proposed by claude shannon in 1948 to find fundamental limits on signal processing and communication operations such as data compression, in a landmark paper titled a mathematical theory of communication. The central themes of information theory include compression, storage, and communication. Claude shannon 19162001 had considerable talents and interest in the disciplines of electrical circuitry, mathematics, cryptology and code breaking and his early work in these areas was to evolve into the concept of information theory. Shannon information theory an overview sciencedirect topics. Out of the sixteen chapters in this book, the first thirteen chapters are basic topics, while the last three chapters are advanced topics for the more enthusiastic reader. And the best way ive found is to explain some of the brilliant ideas he had. Since then communication theory or information theory as it is sometimes called has become an accepted field of research. Jaynes shows how to derive shannons entropy from basic principles in his book. Bush, arguably, had laid the ideological foundation for information theory three years before shannons invention of the bit in his prophetic essay as we may think. This is entirely consistent with shannon s own approach.
Where nyquist used the vague concept of intelligence and hartley struggled to explain the value of discarding the psychological and semantic, shannon. Shannon and information theory by nasrullah mambrol on july 29, 2018 0. Shannon introduction t he recent development of various methods of modulation such as pcm and ppm which exchange bandwidth for signaltonoise ratio has intensi. This book is devoted to the theory of probabilistic information measures and their application to coding theorems for information sources and noisy channels. It deals with concepts such as information, entropy, information transmission, data compression, coding, and related topics. Claude shannon and the making of information theory. Shannons theory defines the ultimate fidelity limits that communication and. Indeed the diversity and directions of their perspectives and interests shaped the direction of information theory.
Claude shannons 1948 paper a mathematical theory of communication is the paper that made the digital world we live in possible. Shannon said that all information has a source rate that can be measured in bits per second and requires a transmission channel with a capacity equal to or greater than the source rate. A mathematical theory of communication video khan academy. Shannon showed how the oncevague notion of information. These lecture notes is a tribute to the beloved thomas m. Cover and thomass book elements of information theory is a good source on entropy and its applications. In fact, once the power of shannons results became evident, the title of his work changed from a mathematical theory of communication to the mathematical theory a good, modern reference for information theory is cover and thomas 2006. The entire science of information theory grew out of one electrifying paper that shannon published in 1948, when he was a 32yearsold. A tutorial introduction, by me jv stone, published february 2015. In this introductory chapter, we will look at a few representative examples which try to give a. Shannons publication of a mathematical theory of communication in the bell system technical journal of july and october 1948 marks the beginning of information theory and can be.
A thorough introduction to information theory, which strikes a good balance. Aug 04, 20 originally developed by claude shannon in the 1940s, information theory laid the foundations for the digital revolution, and is now an essential tool in telecommunications, genetics, linguistics, brain sciences, and deep space communication. There are two milestones that shape the main theses in this book. Informationtheory lecture notes stanford university.
Deat information theory enthusiasts, im not sure whether asking a question like this is an appropriate post, but i will try either way. An introduction to information theory and applications. Many books and articles have been published on the subject since shannons original paper most notably those by leon brillouin. Wilson literary science writing award from the bestselling author of the acclaimed chaos and genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era. The heart of gleicks book is his treatment of the new information theory that shannon and computer scientist and mathematician alan turing, noisily brilliant pioneer norbert stuart wiener and many others created in the middle decades of the 20th century. Information theory an overview sciencedirect topics. An introduction to information theory by fazlollah m. The eventual goal is a general development of shannons mathematical theory of communication, but much of the space is devoted to the tools and methods. Claude shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind.
Soni and goodman write that shannon had a way of getting behind things. As such, it is the perfect expression of shannons gift for abstraction. Find the top 100 most popular items in amazon books best sellers. Alan turing and his wartime assistant, irving john good, used h p, q in their codebreaking work, but it was not until 1959 that another wartime code breaker, solomon kullback, developed its properties systematically in his book information theory and statistics 1959, unleashing a floodtide of applications to classification, contingency. When turing himself visited bell labs in 1943, he occasionally lunched with shannon and the two traded speculative theories about the future of computing. This is entirely consistent with shannons own approach. Thomas, and when it proves the channel coding theorem, one of the things it states is that all codes c, are symmetric refer to link. The mathematical theory of communication by claude shannon. Information theory, in the technical sense, as it is used today goes back to the work of claude shannon and was introduced as a means to study and solve problems of communication or transmission of signals over channels. Claude shannon may be considered one of the most influential person of the 20th century, as he laid out the foundation of the revolutionary information theory. This is a really great book it describes a simple and beautiful idea in a way. Information theory is the science of operations on data. Now, although this is a tutorial of this subject, information theory is a subtle and difficult concept. Shannon adapted his theory to analyze ordinary human written language.