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Related papers: Limit complexities revisited

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Since the introduction of the Kolmogorov complexity of binary sequences in the 1960s, there have been significant advancements in the topic of complexity measures for randomness assessment, which are of fundamental importance in theoretical…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Chunlei Li

We prove a strong Symmetry of Information relation for random strings (in the sense of Kolmogorov complexity) and establish tight bounds on the amount on nonuniformity that is necessary for extracting a string with randomness rate 1 from a…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2011-03-30 Marius Zimand

The coding theorem for Kolmogorov complexity states that any string sampled from a computable distribution has a description length close to its information content. A coding theorem for resource-bounded Kolmogorov complexity is the key to…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2024-09-20 Shuichi Hirahara , Zhenjian Lu , Mikito Nanashima

The (prefix-free) Kolmogorov complexity of a finite binary string is the length of the shortest description of the string. This gives rise to some `standard' lowness notions for reals: A is K-trivial if its initial segments have the lowest…

Logic · Mathematics 2014-10-15 Ian Herbert

Classical versions of Kolmogorov complexity are incomputable. Nevertheless, in 1975 Solovay showed that there are computable functions $f > K+O(1)$ such that for infinitely many strings $\sigma$, $f(\sigma)=K(\sigma)+O(1)$, where $K$…

Logic · Mathematics 2016-03-29 Laurent Bienvenu , Rod Downey , Wolfgang Merkle , André Nies

The Coding Theorem of L.A. Levin connects unconditional prefix Kolmogorov complexity with the discrete universal distribution. There are conditional versions referred to in several publications but as yet there exist no written proofs in…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2013-01-23 Paul M. B. Vitanyi

We study the possible growth rates of the Kolmogorov complexity of initial segments of sequences that are random with respect to some computable measure on $2^\omega$, the so-called proper sequences. Our main results are as follows: (1) We…

Logic · Mathematics 2016-11-09 Rupert Hölzl , Christopher P. Porter

While Kolmogorov complexity is the accepted absolute measure of information content of an individual finite object, a similarly absolute notion is needed for the relation between an individual data sample and an individual model summarizing…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2007-07-16 Peter Gacs , John Tromp , Paul Vitanyi

Effective complexity measures the information content of the regularities of an object. It has been introduced by M. Gell-Mann and S. Lloyd to avoid some of the disadvantages of Kolmogorov complexity, also known as algorithmic information…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2010-11-22 Nihat Ay , Markus Mueller , Arleta Szkola

We provide tight upper and lower bounds on the expected minimum Kolmogorov complexity of binary classifiers that are consistent with labeled samples. The expected size is not more than complexity of the target concept plus the conditional…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2022-02-04 Samuel Epstein

We introduce quantum-K ($QK$), a measure of the descriptive complexity of density matrices using classical prefix-free Turing machines and show that the initial segments of weak Solovay random and quantum Schnorr random states are…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-06-30 Tejas Bhojraj

Drawing on various notions from theoretical computer science, we present a novel numerical approach, motivated by the notion of algorithmic probability, to the problem of approximating the Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity of short strings. The…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2015-03-13 Fernando Soler-Toscano , Hector Zenil , Jean-Paul Delahaye , Nicolas Gauvrit

We survey diverse approaches to the notion of information: from Shannon entropy to Kolmogorov complexity. Two of the main applications of Kolmogorov complexity are presented: randomness and classification. The survey is divided in two parts…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2010-10-20 Marie Ferbus-Zanda , Serge Grigorieff

A real number is called left-computable if there exists a computable increasing sequence of rational numbers converging to it. In this article we investigate the Kolmogorov complexity and the binary expansions of a very specific subset of…

Logic · Mathematics 2025-09-29 Peter Hertling , Philip Janicki

We survey the Kolmogorov's approach to the notion of randomness through the Kolmogorov complexity theory. The original motivation of Kolmogorov was to give up a quantitative definition of information. In this theory, an object is randomness…

Logic · Mathematics 2008-01-03 Marie Ferbus-Zanda , Serge Grigorieff

The van Lambalgen theorem is a surprising result in algorithmic information theory concerning the symmetry of relative randomness. It establishes that for any pair of infinite sequences $A$ and $B$, $B$ is Martin-L\"of random and $A$ is…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2019-11-07 Diptarka Chakraborty , Satyadev Nandakumar , Himanshu Shukla

The Kolmogorov complexity of x, denoted C(x), is the length of the shortest program that generates x. For such a simple definition, Kolmogorov complexity has a rich and deep theory, as well as applications to a wide variety of topics…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-02-17 Stephen Fenner , Lance Fortnow

We study the computably enumerable sets in terms of the: (a) Kolmogorov complexity of their initial segments; (b) Kolmogorov complexity of finite programs when they are used as oracles. We present an extended discussion of the existing…

Logic · Mathematics 2013-11-28 George Barmpalias , Angsheng Li

Is it possible to find a shortest description for a binary string? The well-known answer is "no, Kolmogorov complexity is not computable." Faced with this barrier, one might instead seek a short list of candidates which includes a laconic…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2014-02-14 Jason Teutsch

Muchnik's theorem about simple conditional descriptions states that for all strings $a$ and $b$ there exists a short program $p$ transforming $a$ to $b$ that has the least possible length and is simple conditional on $b$. In this paper we…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2011-03-21 Daniil Musatov , Andrei Romashchenko , Alexander Shen