2009-10 Catalog: Information Science and Technology

This course offers an introduction to the modern study of information, addressing fundamental questions about information representation, transmission, and learning. Questions considered include: What is information, and how should we represent it for storage and transmission? What does it mean to represent information efficiently? Is there a "shortest possible" description? Can we hope to communicate reliably in a noisy world? How much information can be transmitted, and what are the strategies by which we can improve reliability? What does it mean for a machine to learn? How much data must be observed to achieve reliable learning? Not offered on a pass/ fail basis. Satisfies the menu requirement of the Caltech core curriculum.

The course explains the key concepts at the foundations of computing with physical substrates, including representations of numbers, Boolean algebra as an axiomatic system, Boolean functions and their representations, composition of functions and relations, implementing functions with circuits, circuit complexity, representation of computational processes with state diagrams, state diagrams as a composition of Boolean functions and memory, and the implementation of computational processes with finite state machines. The basic concepts covered in the course are connected to advanced topics like programming, computability, logic, complexity theory, information theory, and biochemical systems. Not offered on a pass/fail basis. Satisfies the menu requirement of the Caltech core curriculum.