A Mathematical Theory of Communication

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A Mathematical Theory of Communication is an influential[1][2] 1948 article[3][4] by mathematician Claude E. Shannon. It was renamed "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" in the book,[5] a small but significant title change after realizing the generality of this work.

Description

File:Shannon communication system.svg
Shannon's diagram of a general communications system, which shows the process that produces a message.

The article was the founding work of the field of information theory. It was later published in 1949 as a book titled The Mathematical Theory of Communication (ISBN 0-252-72546-8), which was published as a paperback in 1963 (ISBN 0-252-72548-4). The book contains an additional article by Warren Weaver, providing an overview of the theory for a more general audience. Shannon's article laid out the basic elements of communication:

  • An information source that produces a message
  • A transmitter that operates on the message to create a signal which can be sent through a channel
  • A channel, which is the medium over which the signal, carrying the information that composes the message, is sent
  • A receiver, which transforms the signal back into the message intended for delivery
  • A destination, which can be a person or a machine, for whom or which the message is intended

It also developed the concepts of information entropy and redundancy, and introduced the term bit as a unit of information.

References

  1. Robert B. Ash. Information Theory. New York: Interscience, 1965. ISBN 0-470-03445-9. New York: Dover 1990. ISBN 0-486-66521-6, p. v
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  5. Claude E. Shannon, Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Univ of Illinois Press, 1949. ISBN 0-252-72548-4

External links


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