|
|
Re: information theory?
Posted:
Nov 2, 2011 2:51 PM
|
|
On Nov 2, Chris <chris.sant...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Be careful going down this path. For me it was
> much more interesting in theory than in practice.
>
> Me in 2008: "Like, what *is* the nature of information,
> man?" (waves hand to clear smoke from the room)
>
> Then I signed up for Info Theory, and I spent
> a whole semester taking integrals of logs of
> probability distributions and proving that one
> was bounded by the other.
It's too bad you got so little out of it.
It's not 'just a theory', it's a field
where theory and practice coincide.
The theorists concoct the recipes, the
engineers follow the instructions, and
it works, bang on. Fukengrooven.
And it's the root of many a Silly Con
Valley fortune.
I strongly suggest, if you have some
free neurons and time and nothing's good on
tv, read Shannon's original paper. It's
utterly fucking brilliant. There's no doubt,
in Valhalla, Shannon shares a table with Einstein.
It's sort of funny, he called it communication
theory, it was his disciples who popularized
'information theory'.
--
Rich
|
|
