An Introduction to Information Theory

Symbols, Signals and Noise

De: John R. Pierce

Narrado por: Kyle Tait

Duración: 10 h y 12 m

Resumen del Editor

Behind the familiar surfaces of the telephone, radio, and television lies a sophisticated and intriguing body of knowledge known as information theory. This is the theory that has permitted the rapid development of all sorts of communication, from color television to the clear transmission of photographs from the vicinity of Jupiter. Even more revolutionary progress is expected in the future.

Beginning with the origins of this burgeoning field, Dr. Pierce follows the brilliant formulations of Claude Shannon and describes such aspects of the subject as encoding and binary digits, entropy, language and meaning, efficient encoding, and the noisy channel. He then goes beyond the strict confines of the topic to explore the ways in which information theory relates to physics, cybernetics, psychology, and art. Mathematical formulas are introduced at the appropriate points for the benefit of serious students.

J. R. Pierce worked for many years at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he became Director of Research in Communications Principles. An Introduction to Information Theory continues to be the most impressive nontechnical account available and a fascinating introduction to the subject for lay listeners.

©2012 John R. Pierce (P)2019 Tantor

1960's classic - still highly relevant

It was amusing to hear that topics that conceptually were easy to postulate back in th 60's and 70's have or are on the brink of becomming reality.

Chapter 2 through 4 are high in entropy and if you are not familiar with those terms when starting the audiobook, don't start it ;-)

Not for the layman

Great material, though hard to follow. The description stated it was Information Theory for the layman, however I found that to be slightly misleading. If you are already familiar with concepts of mathematics then be all means this is a good find, if not, find another easier listen.

Not bad, but...

It's not clear who exactly this book is for. It boasts in requiring no prior knowledge, but it is full of math that wasn't trivial for me to follow (I'm scientist by profession). Also, the book is a little out of focus at times, and seems out of date at times. It moves from discussing encoding and error correction to information theory in art and music and then to "cybernetics", a fuzzy term that was apparently popular at the time and went out of favor. That being said, it's an interesting book and full of useful information; but I think you should not expect to get much out of it if you're not an expert. Also, it is not very well suited for an audio format. It refers to figures and long and complex equations at various points, and there's no accompanying PDF file as far as I could see.

difficult as an audio book

I liked the book although it is, at least for me, difficult as an audio book.

Needs an accompanying PDF

great intro but definately could use an accompanying PDF to clarify some of the topics.