Customer Reviews

Basic Concepts in Information Theory and Coding: The Adventures of Secret Agent 00111 (Applications of Communications Theory)

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This book is a superb exposition of information theory. The 3 authors are acknowledged experts in the field (especially Solomon Golomb). But more than that. The writing style is deeply technical, but clear enough that it can be easily followed by the attentive reader.

There is only 1 flaw, so to speak. The book starts off with by quickly going into Shannon's definition of entropy. And building from there, following and expanding the path laid out by Shannon decades ago. The oddity is that, aside from mentioning Shannon in the introduction, there appears to be no further mention of him. Even in the epochal definition of the information entropy. The authors are of course well aware of this. They use the literary construct of "Agent 00111" throughout. Amusing at first. However it may wear thin a few pages into the text. I half suspect that Agent 00111 is a standin for Shannon. Not sure, but it's one of these things where you read a book and sense you're missing a joke somewhere.