3 ms·

My personal favorite, Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication: http://worrydream.com/refs/Shannon%20-%20A%20Mathematical%20Theory%20of%20Communication.

• lisper 9y ago
  Heh, just found a mistake in this paper: "A device with two stable positions, such as a relay or a flip-flop circuit, can store one bit of information. N such devices can store N bits, since the total number of possible states is 2^N and log(base2) 2^N =􏰃 N." This is true only if the devices/bits are in a known order. If they are unordered, then N devices can store only log(N) bits of information (because the state of the system is completely characterized by the number of 1 bits, and that ranges from 0 to N). This is not a completely academic observation. For example, if you have two thumb drives, each of which stores N bits, the two of them together store 2N bits ONLY if you can tell which drive is which. If you can't distinguish them, then the sum total of information they contain is 2N-1 bits.
  • chj 9y ago
    > This is true only if the devices/bits are in a known order. I think that's an assumption.