Related papers: Meaningful Information
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…
Algorithmic statistics has two different (and almost orthogonal) motivations. From the philosophical point of view, it tries to formalize how the statistics works and why some statistical models are better than others. After this notion of…
We introduce algorithmic information theory, also known as the theory of Kolmogorov complexity. We explain the main concepts of this quantitative approach to defining `information'. We discuss the extent to which Kolmogorov's and Shannon's…
There are (at least) three approaches to quantifying information. The first, algorithmic information or Kolmogorov complexity, takes events as strings and, given a universal Turing machine, quantifies the information content of a string as…
It is not obvious what fraction of all the potential information residing in the molecules and structures of living systems is significant or meaningful to the system. Sets of random sequences or identically repeated sequences, for example,…
In analogy of classical Kolmogorov complexity we develop a theory of the algorithmic information in bits contained in any one of continuously many pure quantum states: quantum Kolmogorov complexity. Classical Kolmogorov complexity coincides…
Kolmogorov complexity measures the algorithmic complexity of a finite binary string $\sigma$ in terms of the length of the shortest description $\sigma^*$ of $\sigma$. Traditionally, the length of a string is taken to measure the amount of…
Kolmogorov suggested to measure quality of a statistical hypothesis $P$ for a data $x$ by two parameters: Kolmogorov complexity $C(P)$ of the hypothesis and the probability $P(x)$ of $x$ with respect to $P$. P. G\'acs, J. Tromp, P.M.B.…
Algorithmic information theory studies description complexity and randomness and is now a well known field of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. There are several textbooks and monographs devoted to this theory where one…
In 1974 Kolmogorov proposed a non-probabilistic approach to statistics and model selection. Let data be finite binary strings and models be finite sets of binary strings. Consider model classes consisting of models of given maximal…
We introduce a uniform representation of general objects that captures the regularities with respect to their structure. It allows a representation of a general class of objects including geometric patterns and images in a sparse, modular,…
Kolmogorov complexity theory is used to tell what the algorithmic informational content of a string is. It is defined as the length of the shortest program that describes the string. We present a programming language that can be used to…
Mutual information I in infinite sequences (and in their finite prefixes) is essential in theoretical analysis of many situations. Yet its right definition has been elusive for a long time. I address it by generalizing Kolmogorov Complexity…
Given two events $A$ and $B$, Bayes' law is based on the argument that the probability of $A$ given $B$ is proportional to the probability of $B$ given $A$. When probabilities are interpreted in the Bayesian sense, Bayes' law constitutes a…
A general notion of information-related complexity applicable to both natural and man-made systems is proposed. The overall approach is to explicitly consider a rational agent performing a certain task with a quantifiable degree of success.…
I discuss several aspects of information theory and its relationship to physics and neuroscience. The unifying thread of this somewhat chaotic essay is the concept of Kolmogorov or algorithmic complexity (Kolmogorov Complexity, for short).…
The mission of statistics is to provide adequate statistical hypotheses (models) for observed data. But what is an "adequate" model? To answer this question, one needs to use the notions of algorithmic information theory. It turns out that…
Using the theory of Kolmogorov complexity the notion of facticity {\phi}(x) of a string is defined as the amount of self-descriptive information it contains. It is proved that (under reasonable assumptions: the existence of an empty machine…
We consider the problem of inferring the probability distribution associated with a language, given data consisting of an infinite sequence of elements of the languge. We do this under two assumptions on the algorithms concerned: (i) like a…
Kolmogorov complexity of a finite binary word reflects both algorithmic structure and the empirical distribution of symbols appearing in the word. Words with symbol frequencies far from one half have smaller combinatorial richness and…