Elements of information theory / Thomas M. Cover, Joy A. Thomas

Their definitions of the basic notions in Information Theory are accompanied by a lot of examples that make intuitively clear why these notions have to be defined in that way. The proofs of the basic theorems are very transparent and (of course this goes hand in hand) elegant. Furthermore the authors give a lot of connections and applications of results of Information Theory to other sciences (e.g. Probability Theory, Physics, Economy and Computer Science). I think the book could perfectly be used to give a course in Information Theory to students from different branches. Almost no mathematical background is required, however it helps when some knowledge on probability theory is present. The book contains a lot of nice exercises that encourage the student in mastering the basic techniques and applying results. Every chapter closes with a summary in which the main results of the chapter are restated. This is followed by the exercises and a kind of historical perspective stating who contributed to the development of the results and where they can be found for the first time. (Zentralblatt)

Bibliogr. p. 510-525. Index