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Section editor's foreword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

R. J. McEliece
R. J. McEliece
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
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Summary

Transmission of information is at the heart of what we call communication. As an area of concern it is so vast as to touch upon the preoccupations of philosophers and to give rise to a thriving technology.

We owe to the genius of Claude Shannon the recognition that a large class of problems related to encoding, transmitting, and decoding information can be approached in a systematic and disciplined way: his classic paper of 1948 marks the birth of a new chapter of Mathematics.

In the past thirty years there has grown a staggering literature in this fledgling field, and some of its terminology even has become part of our daily language.

The present monograph (actually two monographs in one) is an excellent introduction to the two aspects of communication: coding and transmission.

The first (which is the subject of Part two) is an elegant illustration of the power and beauty of Algebra; the second belongs to Probability Theory which the chapter begun by Shannon enriched in novel and unexpected ways.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Theory of Information and Coding
Student Edition
 , pp. ix
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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  • Section editor's foreword
  • R. J. McEliece, California Institute of Technology
  • Book: The Theory of Information and Coding
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819896.002
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  • Section editor's foreword
  • R. J. McEliece, California Institute of Technology
  • Book: The Theory of Information and Coding
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819896.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Section editor's foreword
  • R. J. McEliece, California Institute of Technology
  • Book: The Theory of Information and Coding
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819896.002
Available formats
×