Some say that even if the theory of evolution is right, it is useless and has no practical application. Shannon, who died in 2001 at the age of 84, gets his due in a terrific new biography. In information theory, a mathematical representation of a pointtopoint discrete memoryless channel dmc consists of two random variables, x and y, corresponding to the input and output sequences and a set of conditional probability mass. Informative definition of informative by merriamwebster. The term, information overload, was first used in bertram gross 1964 book, the managing of organizations, 6 and it was further popularized by alvin toffler in his. Hartley published a paper titled transmission of information and in 1946 dennis gabor published a paper titled theory of communication. Which is the best introductory book for information theory. Information overload most likely originated from information theory. The mega book of useless information by noel botham in chm, fb2, rtf download ebook. Generally, the term is associated with the excessive quantity of daily information. Information theory studies the quantification, storage, and communication of information. Types of channels useless channel x and y are independent for.
Jan 08, 2001 selfhelp books have become hugely popular in recent years. However, hayek was writing in a time before information theory. In 1995, a secret society was formed comprising britains foremost thinkers, writers, and artists to explore the worlds most bizarre nooks and crannies and to trade and share useless information or, as founding member keith waterhouse, playwright and journalist, would have it, totally bloody uselessusually over a pint or two at a local pub. Selfhelp books have become hugely popular in recent years. Its impact has been crucial to the success of the voyager missions to deep space. This is the theory that has permeated the rapid development of all sorts of communication, from color television to the clear transmission of photographs from the vicinity of jupiter. First, he formed two groups of people and gave members of one group a test of driving ability while they were using a cell phone with the second group taking the driving test without using a cell phone. He proved that this channel is equivalent in terms of capacity to a usual. Aug 26, 2017 it is the study of encoding messages, images, etc. As the other books of useless information are this book is once again filled to the brim with facts that will probably be used one day if somebody can memorize all of these facts. Discrete memoryless channel an overview sciencedirect topics. Aerogel is the densest solid in the world at 1mgcc. People dont understand how harmful it is to health.
The channel theory allowed medicine to move from entirely spiritual cures for diseases and disorders, towards practical ones. 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. The channel capacity theorem is the central and most famous success of information theory. A tutorial introduction, by me jv stone, published february 2015. The book covers all sorts of material, but frequent topics are celebrities and other people, and their personal qualities, animals, calendar dates, years, toilets. This representation is useful to bound mutual information from above by choosing some q.
Jul 26, 2017 no scientist has an impacttofame ratio greater than claude elwood shannon, the creator of information theory. Thus we will think of an event as the observance of a symbol. Even more revolutionary progress is expected in the future. For further reading, here are some other readings that my professor did recommend. A channel is useless or zero capacity if i x y 0 for all input distributions. Hayeks the use of knowledge in society was written in 1945, a just few years before claude shannons a mathematical theory of communication in 1948. Appendix summarizes hilbert space background and results from the theory of stochastic processes. Ebooks, fantasy, fiction, graphic novels, historical fiction, history. Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world, at 0. The book covers all sorts of material, but frequent topics are celebrities and other people, and their personal qualities, animals, calendar dates, years, toilets, songs, bands, and information normally in the form of lists.
Profile of claude shannon, inventor of information theory. My channel is not focused on one topic or one category. Below is a figure of a multiple access channel borrowed from network information theory thomas m. This leads to the definition of the channel capacity and to the problem of computing. I have spent the last two year reading fiction, and especially those that are labeled as masterpieces by their fandom, the lord of the rings, the king killers chronicles and harry potter. Find the top 100 most popular items in amazon books best sellers. Psychologist davis strayer wanted to find out if using a cell phone while driving a car affected the likelihood of having an accident.
Communication over a discrete memoryless channel takes place in a discrete number of. An excess of useless information weakens the immune system. Cosmos and culture with no prestated alphabet, information theory, as. Examples are entropy, mutual information, conditional entropy, conditional information, and relative entropy discrimination, kullbackleibler. Scott uminsky over the years many contributions have been made to the field of communication theory. But, says ben marshall, channel 4s living by the book proves what hes always suspected. Our rst reduction will be to ignore any particular features of the event, and only observe whether or not it happened. If you sent these messages over your noisy communication channel that met the requirement for faithful transmission, it would reproduce an informationally equivalent distribution of messages on the other end. Jun 26, 2006 in 1995, a secret society was formed comprising britains foremost thinkers, writers, and artists to explore the worlds most bizarre nooks and crannies and to trade and share useless information or, as founding member keith waterhouse, playwright and journalist, would have it, totally bloody useless usually over a pint or two at a local pub. Network theory complete notes ebook free download pdf. Totally useless facts courtesy of the freeman institute.
Information is inversely proportional to its probability of occurrence. Information theory does not apply to the evolution of. Hayek thought a large amount of knowledge about biological or ecological systems, population, and social systems could be. Information is continuous function of its probability. Information overload also known as infobesity, infoxication, information anxiety, and information explosion is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information about that issue. The information field speculates on peoples psyche and does it successfully because most of us cannot filter waste information. Another interpretation of the kl divergence is the unnecessary surprise. We will begin with measuring the information of protein or rna binding sites on dna or rna rsequence, bits per site using claude shannons information theory. Selfhelp books are worse than useless culture the guardian. The mathematical analog of a physical signalling system is shown in fig.
Types of channels useless channel x and y are independent for all input distributions. The latest entry in mitchell symonss trivia trifecta is chockfull of more obscure scientific facts, sporting stats, celebrity gossip, and pure trivia than ever. Shannons main result, the noisychannel coding theorem showed that, in the. Mar 12, 2012 information theory does not apply to the evolution of the biosphere. Elements of information theory is probably the first book that covers the subject. 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. Information theory is the branch of probability theory that includes the application. May 01, 2009 some say that even if the theory of evolution is right, it is useless and has no practical application. The gaussian channel the most important continuous alphabet channel is the gaussian chan nel depicted in figure 10. Cosmos and culture with no prestated alphabet, information theory, as now available, has no relevance to evolution. An excess of useless information weakens the immune. No scientist has an impacttofame ratio greater than claude elwood shannon, the creator of information theory. What you may so cavalierly call useless information could prove invaluable to someone else. Discover the best information theory in best sellers.
This scientist, in an attempt to create fruits and vegetables that were resistant to certain types of diseases that affect plants, started injecting small amounts of radiation into the seeds of these plants. William j fitzgerald, in telecommunications engineers reference book, 1993. I taught an introductory course on information theory to a small class. The notion of entropy, which is fundamental to the whole topic of this book. I try to use a mixture of me standing in front of a camera and crude drawings to entertain, educate. In this stimulating, if difficult book, campbell sees information theory as the new science that can inform linguistics, social science, genetics, and neuroscience, while it also continues in its association with computer science.
I did not read them shame on me, so i cant say if theyre good or not. An introduction to information theory dover books on mathematics. The useless channel subscribed to a channel 11 months ago foxtail8000 channel. Lecture notes on information theory department of statistics, yale. Information theory does not apply to the evolution. The strange, the familiar, and the forgotten june 8, 2017 by andrew archer, lcsw memory is not a recording of an image or a trace but part of the process. 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 resulting information curve can be displayed by the nowpopular graphical method of sequence logos which we invented. That is why your tv set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1. Information theory does not apply to the evolution of the biosphere. The future of work, robotization, and capitalisms ability to generate useless jobs. Information theory in biology at the meeting shannon centenary department of electrical engineering at the indian institute of technology, kanpur, india, wednesday, october 19th, 2016. Gallager, information theory and reliable communication, wiley, 1968.
Examples are entropy, mutual information, conditional entropy, conditional information, and. Before stating and proving the theorem, we introduce some useful nota. Hydrogen solid is the most dense substance in the world, at 70. In terms of self development, is reading fiction useless.
Biological information theory and the theory of molecular. They serve as very useful checks on ones understanding. The feature that sets this book aside from the rest of the books of useless information is that it has a solid 60 pages dedicated to famous quote and last words from. All content included on our site, such as text, images, digital downloads and other, is the property of its content suppliers and protected by us and international laws.
Many medical historians say this change was a major turning point, a breakthrough in the history of medicine. 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. Behind the familiar surfaces of the telephone, radio, and television lies a sophisticated and intriguing body of knowledge known as information theory. A person who spends a lot of time online or in front of a tv set doesnt think that a gigantic amount of information which is totally useless for that particular. So one lower bound estimate is simply any particular measurement of the mutual information for this channel, such as the above measurement which was 38 bits. Tentatively titled the flip side of history, the new book will include a collection of stories similar to what is found on this website and in the useless information podcast.
But to the useless information society, any fact that passes its gaspinducing, notalotofpeopleknowthat test merits inclusion in this fascinating but ultimately useless book. This is a time discrete channel with output yi at time i, where yi is the sum of the input xi and the noise 2 the. Polar bears cover their black noses with their paws for better camouflage. Discrete memoryless channel an overview sciencedirect. Information overload most likely originated from information theory, which are studies in the storage, preservation, communication, compression, and extraction of information. The mega book of useless information books library. Thomas schneider, national institute of health, usa in this talk i will sweep across the major ideas i have developed using information theory to understand biology see. Information theory dover books on mathematics 0800759665211.
Channel capacity is the basic information theoretic performance measure for a communication channel. Information theory information it is quantitative measure of information. A reader of this page stated that this statement is not true. Each year there is one ton of cement poured for each man woman and child in the world. An introduction to network information theory with slepian. 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. Source symbols from some finite alphabet are mapped into. Basics of information theory we would like to develop a usable measure of the information we get from observing the occurrence of an event having probability p. In the 1940s, the fcc assigned televisions channel 1 to mobile services twoway radios in taxicabs, for instance but did not renumber the other channel assignments. I used information and coding theory by jones and jones as the course book, and supplemented it with various material, including covers book already cited on this page.
421 160 1331 1065 61 560 1073 1245 312 781 139 637 871 138 362 130 1484 1157 854 57 1269 922 35 1036 797 1325 1528 675 1343 1077 860 347 484 992 341 1185 1352 1329 484