Benjamin Schumacher
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 20
Language
English
Description
Algorithmic information is plagued by a strange impossibility that shakes the very foundations of logic and mathematics. Investigate this drama in four acts, starting with a famous conundrum called the Berry Paradox and including Turing's surprising proof that no single computer program can determine whether other programs will ever halt.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 24
Language
English
Description
Survey the phenomenon of information from pre-history to the projected far future, focusing on the special problem of anti-cryptography-designing an understandable message for future humans or alien civilizations. Close by revisiting Shannon's original definition of information and ask, "What does the theory of information leave out?"
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 7
Language
English
Description
You focus on the Einstein-Bohr debate, which pitted Einstein's belief that quantum events can, in principle, be known in every detail, against Bohr's philosophy of complementarity - the view that a measurement of one quantum variable precludes a different variable from ever being known.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 22
Language
English
Description
Learn how a feature of the quantum world called entanglement is the key to an unbreakable code. Review the counterintuitive rules of entanglement. Then play a game based on The Newlywed Game that illustrates the monogamy of entanglement. This is the principle underlying quantum cryptography.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 8
Language
English
Description
Beginning his presentation of quantum mechanics in simplified form, Professor Schumacher discusses the mysteries and paradoxes of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. He concludes with a thought experiment showing that an interferometer can determine whether a bomb will blow up without necessarily setting it off.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 12
Language
English
Description
You discover that the tendency of bosons to congregate in the same quantum state can lead to amazing applications. In a laser, huge numbers of photons are created, moving in exactly the same direction with the same energy. In superconductivity, quantum effects allow electrons to flow forever without resistance.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 6
Language
English
Description
One of the most famous and misunderstood concepts in quantum mechanics is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. You trace Werner Heisenberg's route to this revolutionary view of subatomic particle interactions, which establishes a trade-off between how precisely a particle's position and momentum can be defined.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 13
Language
English
Description
Learn how DNA and RNA serve as the digital medium for genetic information. Also see how shared features of different life forms allow us to trace our origins back to an organism known as LUCA-the last universal common ancestor-which lived 3.5 to 4 billion years ago.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 10
Language
English
Description
Many quantum particles move through space and also have an intrinsic spin. Analyzing spin gives you a simple laboratory for exploring the basic ideas of quantum mechanics, and it is one of your key tools for understanding the quantum world.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 8
Language
English
Description
Dig into different techniques for error correction. Start with a game called word golf, which demonstrates the perils of mistaking one letter for another and how to guard against it. Then graduate to approaches used for correcting errors in computer operating systems, CDs, and data transmissions from the Voyager spacecraft.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 10
Language
English
Description
The science of information is also the science of secrets. Investigate the history of cryptography starting with the simple cipher used by Julius Caesar. See how entropy is a useful measure of the security of an encryption key, and follow the deciphering strategies that cracked early codes.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 4
Language
English
Description
Intuition says we measure information by looking at the length of a message. But Shannon's information theory starts with something more fundamental: how surprising is the message? Through illuminating examples, discover that entropy provides a measure of the average surprise.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 7
Language
English
Description
One of the key issues in information theory is noise: the message received may not convey everything about the message sent. Discover Shannon's second fundamental theorem, which proves that error correction is possible and can be built into a message with only a modest slowdown in transmission rate.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 17
Language
English
Description
Maxwell's demon has startling implications for the push toward ever-faster computers. Probe the connection between the second law of thermodynamics and the erasure of information, which turns out to be a practical barrier to computer processing speed. Learn how computer scientists deal with the demon.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 21
Language
English
Description
Enter the quantum realm to see how this revolutionary branch of physics is transforming the science of information. Begin with the double-slit experiment, which pinpoints the bizarre behavior that makes quantum information so different. Work your way toward a concept that seems positively magical: the quantum computer.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 2
Language
English
Description
You investigate the age-old debate over whether the physical world is discrete or continuous. By the 19th century, physicists saw a clear demarcation: Matter is made of discrete atoms, while light is a continuous wave of electromagnetic energy. However, a few odd phenomena remained difficult to explain.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 13
Language
English
Description
Why is matter solid, even though atoms are mostly empty space? The answer is the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which states that no two identical fermions can ever be in the same quantum state.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 18
Language
English
Description
One of Claude Shannon's colleagues at Bell Labs was the brilliant scientist and brash Texan John Kelly. Explore Kelly's insight that information is the advantage we have in betting on possible alternatives. Apply his celebrated log-optimal strategy to horse racing and stock trading.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 12
Language
English
Description
The one-time pad may be in principle unbreakable, but consider the common mistakes that make this code system vulnerable. Focus on the Venona project that deciphered Soviet intelligence messages encrypted with one-time pads. Close with the mathematics behind public key cryptography, which makes modern transactions secure-for now.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 5
Language
English
Description
Probe the link between entropy and coding. In the process, encounter Shannon's first fundamental theorem, which specifies how far information can be squeezed in a binary code, serving as the basis for data compression. See how this works with a text such as Conan Doyle's The Return of Sherlock Holmes.