Information Theory, STA865, call# 7358
Instructor: Andrew A. Reilly, Ph. D.
Meeting dates: Monday 4:15 and Tuesday, 5:35 PM.
Room C6.

The increasing use of computers has been accompanied with an explosion of the use of the term information: Infomercials, Management Information Systems (MIS), Cheif Information Officer (CIO), System Information Analysis (SIA), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Information Science, Information Technology, Informatics (Medical and non), Library Information Science, Information Infastructure, etc. Some of these uses refer to only the existance of and ability to access data. Others clearly refer to either the ability to extract some knowledge from data or measuring the amount of information it contains. This course will focus on statistical information theory which is clearly centered on the latter objectives. Applications of the theory to recent developments in the biological sciences will be examined.
Topics to be covered include: 
1 Basic algebraic relationships of entropy  Feb 1 1-28
2 Second Law of Thermodynamics, Sufficient Statisitics Feb 2 29-49
3 Equipartition property, Entropy rates of stochastic processes  Feb 8 50-77
4 Data compression, Huffman and Shannon codes Feb 9 78-100
5       Optimal coding Feb 16 101-124
6       Data compression examples Feb 22 125-143
7 Kolmogorov complexity  Feb 23 144-182
8 Channel capacity, Hamming codes Mar 8 183-211
9 Joint source coding, Differential Entropy Mar 9 212-238
10 Gaussian channels Mar 15 239-264
11 Max Ent, Spectral Estimation, information theory and statistics Mar 16 266-290
!! Midterm Exam, lectures 1-10 Mar 22 !!!!
12 Relationship between information theory, statistics, and likelihood  Mar 23 291-317
13       Lempel-Ziv coding, Cramer-Rao inequality Mar 30 318-335
14 Rate distortion definition and rate calculation Apr 5 336-361
15         Rate function characterization and channel capacity Apr 6 362-372
16 Network information theory Apr 12 374-406
17         Encoding correlated sources Apr 13 407-427
18         Source coding with side information Apr 19 428-457
19 Information Theory and the Stock Market Apr 20 459-481
20 Inequalities in information theory.  Apr 26 482-509
!! Second Exam, lectures 11-20 Apr 27 !!!!
21 Molecular Information Theory:  May 3 Ref 1
24 Information content of genetic sequences  May 4 Ref 2
25 Information analysis of binding sites  May 10 Ref 3
26 Channel Capacity of Molecular Machines  May 11 Ref 4
!! Final Exam/Project May 17 !!!!
! Commencement May 23

There will be 2 midterms and a final exam. Participants will make one presentation in an information area of their own choosing.

Textbook: Cover, Thomas and Thomas, Joy. 1991. Elements of information Theory. Wiley.

References and Supplemental journal articles