• Question: What is the information theory?

    Asked by Georgina to Oliver on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Ahh so confusingly information theory isn’t an actual theory, but is an area of study, like particle physics. Information theory is the study of sending, receiving, and storing information — and we use it every day!

      Theorems from information theory tell us what the fewest number of signals we need to send a message to someone is, or how little storage space we need on our computer to save a file, without losing any of it. Basically we think of everything in the world as containing a certain amount of information, which we can count up, and try to work out the most efficient way to store or send that information.

      Information theory is actually a part of physics, because the amount of information in a system is linked to its entropy — one of the most fundamental physical properties.

      It’s not a very down-to-earth way of looking at the world, so it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I find it fascinating and enjoy working on it 😛

Comments