Information Theory: MATH34600 Professor Oliver Johnson
[email protected] Twitter: @BristOliver School of Mathematics, University of Bristol Teaching Block 1, 2019-20 Oliver Johnson (
[email protected]) Information Theory: @BristOliver TB 1 c UoB 2019 1 / 157 Why study information theory? Information theory was introduced by Claude Shannon in 1948. Paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication available via course webpage. It forms the basis for our modern world. Information theory is used every time you make a phone call, take a selfie, download a movie, stream a song, save files to your hard disk. Represent randomly generated `messages' by sequences of 0s and 1s Key idea: some sources of randomness are more random than others. Can compress random information (remove redundancy) to save space when saving it. Can pad out random information (introduce redundancy) to avoid errors when transmitting it. Quantity called entropy quantifies how well we can do. Oliver Johnson (
[email protected]) Information Theory: @BristOliver TB 1 c UoB 2019 2 / 157 Relationship to other fields (from Cover and Thomas) Now also quantum information, security, algorithms, AI/machine learning (privacy), neuroscience, bioinformatics, ecology . Oliver Johnson (
[email protected]) Information Theory: @BristOliver TB 1 c UoB 2019 3 / 157 Course outline 15 lectures, 3 exercise classes, 5 mandatory HW sets. Printed notes are minimal, lectures will provide motivation and help. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO ATTEND LECTURES AND TO ENSURE YOU HAVE A FULL SET OF NOTES AND SOLUTIONS Course webpage for notes, problem sheets, links, textbooks etc: https://people.maths.bris.ac.uk/∼maotj/IT.html Drop-in sessions: 11.30-12.30 on Mondays, G83 Fry Building.