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Part of the book series: Graduate Texts in Computer Science ((TCS))

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Abstract

The most natural approach to defining the quantity of information is clearly to define it in relation to the individual object (be it Homer’s Odyssey or a particular type of dodo) rather than in relation to a set of objects from which the individual object may be selected. To do so, one could define the quantity of information in an object in terms of the number of bits required to describe it. A description of an object is evidently only useful if we can reconstruct the object from this description.

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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Li, M., Vitányi, P. (1997). Algorithmic Complexity. In: An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications. Graduate Texts in Computer Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2606-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2606-0_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-2608-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-2606-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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