telecommunications

Thomas Cover is a well-known researcher for both his excellent and sometimes surprising work in information theory, and his reputation as a teacher. The result here is a very well-written and gentle "overview" of information theory that is designed as a comprehensive introduction to the subject.

One thing to note about this book is that it is by design both an introduction and a survey of information theory, as the title suggests. It starts off with the basic concepts of information theory such as entropy and mutual information, and continues on with brief and gentle reviews of different more intermediate topics such as entropy rates in random processes, introduction to coding, and finally with the channel coding theorem, rate-distortion theorem, network information theory, and other more advanced topics.

While I find that his treatment of the intermediate and advanced topics to be excellent, there are a few weak aspects on this book's treatment of the introductory topics here and there. However, with just a little persistence the reader will be well rewarded by Cover's excellent writing. At each topic, the reader is presented with reason, motivation, intuition and example before delving into the rigorous treatment of the subject. Therefore even the most casual reader will be rewarded with good insights into the different topics in information theory.

That all said, I highly recommend this book to anybody armed with elementary probability who is interested in the general area of communication, signal processing and information theory. Readers who are alergic to math are recommended to start with J.R. Pierce's "Introduction to Information Theory" and readers looking for a casual introduction to the fundamental concepts in information theory are recommended to find a copy of A. Renyi's hard to find "A Diary on Information Theory".

This book is a research-level books that guides you to the world of information theory. Many arguements in the book are closely related to those in the latest information theory papers. For instance, the line of thought of the proof of channel capacity theorem (achievability->error analysis->converse) are still used in many network information theory papers. Hence, not only can readers refer to other papers when learning the subject(esp network information theory), but also get a solid foundation if he wants to continue with information theory. Another point is the intuition employed throughout the book. Dr.Cover visualizes many abstract notions (e.g. typical set)in information theory with clear diagrams. The subject suddenly becomes more approachable, and more importantly, these techniques are very important in subsequent study of the subject. Finally, the broad coverage of the book (of coz, it has depth) provides reader with a sip of the creativity and eclectic nature of information theory. In sum, after reading the book, readers will have some idea of this exciting field! But of coz, this is only the beginning!

This book is a predictable dissapointment. It is just yet another of the best examples of how modern textbooks have diverged from traditional textbooks of the 1950 - 1970's. Although this book doesn't focus too heavily on the "practical" aspects as far as implementation of information theory, it is clear that todays books are not nearly as mathematically rigorous as the books of yesteryear. ...