Title
An Overview of Information Theory and its Applications
Abstract
Information theory is a field that has enabled massive advances in computing and communications over the past century; without it, computers would be much slower, cell phones would barely work, and Youtube probably wouldn’t even exist. Although the field might appear to be narrowly confined to computer science, it has actually yielded insight into a wide range of domains from bioinformatics to natural language processing. Two key objectives of this seminar are to (a) build up the basics of information theory in an approachable way (i.e. via statistical mechanics), and (b) explain how information theory can be applied to areas outside its original domain. Thus, in this talk, I will go over what types of problems can be solved with information theory and how key concepts in the field can be understood through the lens of statistical mechanics. Then, to emphasize the cross-disciplinary nature of the field, I will demonstrate some examples of how information theory can be applied creatively to solve real-world problems.
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Board Notes
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