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An Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

B. C. Brookes
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Extract

Information Theory was developed to provide electrical engineers with a calculus for comparing telecommunications systems as transmitters of “information”—an ambiguous word used here in a technical sense to be defined. Since 1948 the theory has been rapidly developed and widely applied, but the results of its application to telecommunication engineering have been disappointing in some respects. Although it has been applied indiscriminately to all kinds of communication systems including language, it has nevertheless stimulated new ways of thinking about the storage and transmission of every kind of “information” in the most general sense of that word. It has attracted the attention of workers in fields as diverse as neurology and librarianship, statistical mechanics and psychology, cryptography and the study of social insects. Its terminology and concepts have provided stimulating analogies and have helped to link studies as apparently unrelated as thermodynamics and semantics. It is evidently a branch of applied mathematics of wide general interest.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 40 , Issue 333 , October 1956 , pp. 170 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1956 

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References

Barnard, G. A., “The Theory of Information,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1951.Google Scholar
Goldman, S., Information Theory, London, 1953.Google Scholar
Willis Jackson, S. (Ed.), Symposium on Applications of Communication Theory, London, 1953.Google Scholar
Shannon, C.E. and Weaver, W., The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana, 1949.Google Scholar
Woodward, P. M., Probability and Information Theory with Applications to Radar, London, 1953.Google Scholar