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Codes, communications, and computers |
It defines how much information a message contains, in terms of the probabilities with which the symbols that make it up are likely to occur.
It is the equation that ushered in the information age. It established limits on the efficiency of communications, allowing engineers to stop looking for codes that were too effective to exist. It is basic to today’s digital communications – phones, CDs, DVDs, the internet.
Efficient error-detecting and error-correcting codes, used in everything from CDs to space probes. Applications include statistics, artificial intelligence, cryptography, and extracting meaning from DNA sequences.