The mathematical theory of communication
by Claude Elwood Shannon · first published 1949
46% recommend54% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Founding text of information theory, introducing entropy, the bit, and the limits of communication over a noisy channel. Readable and conversational, with little heavy math; suits anyone curious about information.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Scientific knowledge grows at a phenomenal pace--but few books have had as lasting an impact or played as important a role in our modern world as The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory in the Bell System Technical Journal more than fifty years ago. Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored to issue this commemorative reprinting o
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Thanks for sharing this article...not familiar with Betty Shannon, but her husband, Claude Shannon was really a genius...His paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is one of the most elegant papers that I have read... http://math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entrop... Sigh...the one hundred years before 1990 was really a period of giants, with Claude…
on “Betty Shannon, Unsung Mathematical Genius” ↗Shannon's original paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" which introduced information theory is so accessible as to be useful as a tutorial itself: http://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon...
on “Information Theory: A Tutorial Introduction” ↗Claude Shannon 1948, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_Commun... This paper kickstarted the concept of information theory, and was hugely influential on many fields of research. Signal-to-noise ratio,…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite scholarly papers? Why?” ↗Claude Shannon's original 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" launched the entire field of information theory. It's 50 pages, highly readable, and pedagogical. The source of its magic is that Shannon introduces and concretely grounds an essentially new ontological…
on “Ask HN: Older textbooks/papers you consider classics still worth studying today?” ↗…stuff We need more work like that than papers and media publications grandstanding about vague potential futures that have little theoretical or experimental basis. Also, it's worth reading Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication"[4] from 1948. There's a reason it has 85,278 citations - entire fields started there. [1]: http://smerity.com/articles/2016/ml_not_magic.html [2]: https://twitter.com/jackclarkSF/status/755257228429406208…
on “The Bandwagon – Claude Shannon (1956) [pdf]” ↗"A Mathematical Theory of Communication" - Claude E. Shannon http://math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entrop...
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite CS paper?” ↗…proof-of-work: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Others in this thread have already mentioned papers or opinionated essays that quickly came to mind, including "Reflections on Trusting Trust" by Ken Thompson, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" by Claude Shannon (incredibly well-written and easy-to-follow given the subject matter), and "Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine" by John McCarthy. I would…
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite CS paper?” ↗…provided you have source material recorded and training to interpret it. The forward to Shannon's theory of communication is really essential reading for all software/electrical engineers imo: [1] The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Weaver & Shannon http://www.magmamater.cl/MatheComm.pdf
on “Tibetan musical notation” ↗Shannon's original article "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is available online, for example at [1]; I find it very readable. The MIT article talks about information theory as applied to our digital world, but does not mention that it's now applied widely in…
on “The Shannon Limit (2010)” ↗There was an excellent cs theory stack exchange question on this: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1168/what-papers... [pdf] The top two are nearly tied for: "A mathematical theory of communication" by Claude Shannon http://guohanwei.51.net/code/A%20Mathematical%20Theory%20of%... "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" by Alan Turing http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~ctg/classes/lib/canon/turing-com...…
on “Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice)” ↗Any list without Shannon's 1948 "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is just not a good list. Sorry. http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pd... The foundation of information theory. It is, by far, the most astonishing paper I have ever read.…
on “Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read at Least Twice (2011)” ↗Shannon's original paper, titled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication"[0] which basically founded Information Theory as its own coherent and well defined field is also very readable. Some of the concepts were well known before he published it, some were original -- but…
on “Journey into Information Theory” ↗…multivariate calculus) and know a little classical physics, the first 5 chapters of Wald's _General Relativity_ are an essentially complete introduction to the subject. Another classic is Shannon's _A Mathematical Theory of Communication_, which introduces the subject of information theory, and then solves basically all the subject's main problems. In economics, I think the record for signal to noise is probably held by Keynes _The Econonic…
on “Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?” ↗I suggested: Alan Turing - On Computable Numbers, With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem C. E. Shannon - A Mathematical Theory of Communication
on “An annotated version of the Bitcoin paper” ↗Gleick's book encouraged me to read Shannon's The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Shannon's conversational tone in the first half is amazing. This is a primary work, laying out a novel idea, but it reads as if it were the most self-evident thing there is, and you're just being nudged…
on “Claude Shannon: Tinkerer, Prankster, and Father of Information Theory” ↗