This talk is sponsored by SIAM under the Visiting Lecturers Program. It will be of particular interest to undergrads, grads, and faculty in math, CS, EE, and physics. This lecture will introduce the concepts of information theory and communication theory, and how they are used in everyday life. Information theory tells us how much information is in a message, while communication theory tells us how we can communicate this information over a channel that makes random errors. CD-ROMs use a coding technique so that the information on covered up parts of the disk can be recovered.
Many grocery stores use an error-correcting code on canned foods.
The specific code that each of these uses will be discussed. One of the major results of information theory, the channel coding theorem, will be described. This theorem gives theoretical limits on how well coding can correct for noisy communication channels. Linear and non-linear codes will be described.