This paper kickstarted the concept of information theory, and was hugely influential on many fields of research. Signal-to-noise ratio, the bit, information entropy, etc. are all theories and concepts presented by Shannon.
+1! I find the whole notion of "typical set" to be absolutely amazing.
I would like to share with you a few pages from the intro to my thesis which cover Shannon's channel coding theorem. There are some nice TiKZ illustrations. http://minireference.com/static/excerpts/Shannon_channel_cod... (it's not super detailed, but the definitions of all the moving parts are given)
This is really cool. I'm working in systems research, but I'm fascinated by mathematical research in CS. Did you continue with similar work after your PhD, If I may ask?
I've since switched my research focus to machine learning (look up latent Dirichlet allocation, very cool stuff). I find a lot of parallels between the two fields: prob. theory, matrices, uncertainty, ...
I'm still following quantum information theory research, but more as a spectator from the sidelines. However, a couple of weeks ago I had to come back to quantum info. theory to "defend" my academic reputation. Our colleagues from TIFR found a bug in one of our papers (http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3645v3) so my coauthor and I had to fix it. It was kind of cool to see I hadn't "lost my quantum skills" after two years of running a business. I guess, once you go quantum you never go back? :)
Very cool! Shannon's paper was, to be honest, a little out of my comfort zone when I first read it (this isn't really my field academically), and I got a little lost on the first read of this, but someone below posted your full thesis which I will definitely read when I have the time.
This was the first academic paper I ever read, way back when. For a brief, wonderful time, I thought all academic papers were of a similar caliber, and I was in awe (and not a little bit intimidated).
> For a brief, wonderful time, I thought all academic papers were of a similar caliber
I had the exact same thought in college when I started reading a handful of well-written papers like this myself. This really set a standard that for 60+ years now academia hasn't always maintained.
Wow you beat me to it! This paper affected my college major, my career in my twenties, and my current career. Such an important paper, although, I must admit, it is not easy to decipher at first.
This paper kickstarted the concept of information theory, and was hugely influential on many fields of research. Signal-to-noise ratio, the bit, information entropy, etc. are all theories and concepts presented by Shannon.