Information Theory, Inference & Learning Algorithms
Book Jacket: This textbook introduces theory in tandem with applications. Information theory is taught alongside practical communication systems, such as arithmetic coding for data compression and sparse-graph codes for error-correction. A toolbox of inference techniques, including message-passing algorithms, Monte Carlo methods, and variational approximations, are developed alongside applications of these tools to clustering, convolutional codes, independent component analysis, and neural networks. Publisher Description: This textbook offers comprehensive coverage of Shannon's theory of information as well as the theory of neural networks and probabilistic data modelling. It includes explanations of Shannon's important source encoding theorem and noisy channel theorem as well as descriptions of practical data compression systems. Many examples and exercises make the book ideal for students to use as a class textbook, or as a resource for researchers who need to work with neural networks or state-of-the-art error-correcting codes.
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77recommend
111mentions
93people
2007–2026years
84% recommend16% neutral
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- Point taken, but there is a much more fundamental issue with it - and precisely why I wrote "very conservative".
It is a different problem if we pick two sets from the same data distribution, A and B, and first we have a score on A, then on B. Here we re-run on precisely the same set of Terminal Bench 2.1 problems. It may be that results are so random between runs that each single task has the same probability in a Bernoulli distribution. But more likely, many problems are easy (i.e. each run will solve them consistently), many are too hard (i.e. no run is going to solve them) and only a fraction is somehow in between.
Maybe there is some good trick to find a proper distribution, but to my knowledge, we would need to run it at least two times on TB2.1 to get any more educated estimates. That said, I am open to new ideas.
That said, I consider frequentist probability a dirty trick, and that Bayesian is the proper way of doing things (vide David J.C. MacKay" Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" and Cam Davidson-Pilon "Probabilistic Programming & Bayesian Methods for Hackers" https://www.inference.org.uk/itprnn/book.pdf, https://dataorigami.net/Probabilistic-Programming-and-Bayesi...).
- For anyone wanting an introductory text for information theory & that explores some of these connections & applications, it's worth checking out the late David MacKay's 2003 textbook Information Theory, Inference & Learning Algorithms https://www.inference.org.uk/itila/
- This is the thesis behind the "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" course that was taught at Cambridge University.
> Why unify information theory and machine learning? Because they are two sides of the same coin. In the 1960s, a single field, cybernetics, was populated by information theorists, computer scientists, and neuroscientists, all studying common problems. Information theory and machine learning still belong together. Brains are the ultimate compression and communication systems. And the state-of-the-art algorithms for both data compression and error-correcting codes use the same tools as machine learning.
Book (creative commons): https://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html
Lectures: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruBu5BI5n4aFpG32iMbdWo...
- I found the book from David Mackay on Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms to be well written and easy to follow. Plus it is freely available from his website: https://www.inference.org.uk/itprnn/book.pdf
It goes through fundamentals of Bayesian ideas in the context of applications in communication and machine learning problems. I find his explanations uncluttered.
- Same for David MacKay's Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms https://www.inference.org.uk/itprnn/book.html
- It is also worth mentioning that compression and generative AI are two sides of the same coin. I highly recommend the book "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" by David MacKay, which explores these deep connections.
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