Kolmogorov Complexity in perspective. Part I: Information Theory and Randomnes Marie Ferbus-Zanda, Serge Grigorieff To cite this version: Marie Ferbus-Zanda, Serge Grigorieff. Kolmogorov Complexity in perspective. Part I: Information Theory and Randomnes. Synthese, Springer Verlag (Germany), 2010, pp.00. hal-00525504 HAL Id: hal-00525504 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00525504 Submitted on 12 Oct 2010 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Kolmogorov Complexity in perspective Part I: Information Theory and Randomness∗ Marie Ferbus-Zanda Serge Grigorieff LIAFA, CNRS & Universit´eParis 7 LIAFA, CNRS & Universit´eParis 7 case 7014 case 7014 75205 Paris Cedex 13 France 75205 Paris Cedex 13 France
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract We survey diverse approaches to the notion of information: from Shannon entropy to Kolmogorov complexity. Two of the main applications of Kol- mogorov complexity are presented: randomness and classification. The survey is divided in two parts in the same volume. Part I is dedicated to information theory and the mathematical formaliza- tion of randomness based on Kolmogorov complexity. This last applica- tion goes back to the 60’s and 70’s with the work of Martin-L¨of, Schnorr, Chaitin, Levin, and has gained new impetus in the last years.