
Celebrating Claude Shannon - sasvari
http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/celebrating-claude-shannon
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Isamu
Cheers to 100 years! (on April 30)

Claude spoke at my graduation commencement from CMU years ago. As an
electrical and computer engineer this was such a surprise and delight, I can
hardly describe.

He said that commencement speeches were an opportunity for old codgers to
impart pithy maxims, but that on reflection not a single pithy maxim came to
mind. He came across as a genuine, self-effacing guy, full of fun.

If you get a chance, look again at Information Theory, it's full of gems.

~~~
camwest
I'd also like to recommend The Information: A History, A Theory, a Flood. It
profiles Shannon as part of a history of communication and information.
Fascinating read!

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jmspring
I had classes with David Huffman (who worked under Fano) of Shannon-Fano
coding. He was an amazing instructor.

My advisor was Glen Langdon who worked closely with Jorma Rissanen on
arithmetic coding.

While not in my daily job, the knowledge spent on the challenges these
relationships brought remind me of how our forbears have set foundations for
us to build on.

I still deeply follow, but don't research in, data compression, information
theory, etc.

The name Claude Shannon was a large part of my academic and research years.

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shriphani
Amazing advice from the man himself:
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774)

The Bandwagon - Claude Shannon

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conjectures
For those intrigued, the Dover edition of _An Introduction to Information
Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise_ by Pierce is a very good book. Accessible,
but with a technically credible author.

