Beauty in maths topic

Information Theory

Information theory studies messages, uncertainty, compression, noise and how communication can be made reliable.

live pages

prototype tools

planned ideas

What this area includes

Entropy, surprise and predictability

Compression and representing information efficiently

Noisy channels and communication limits

Error-correcting codes and redundancy

Connections to cryptography, music, AI and data

How much information is in a message?

Why can predictable messages be compressed more?

How can a message survive errors?

These ideas are not built yet, but they show where this topic could grow next.

ideaPlanned

Planned tool for measuring surprise, compressing messages and comparing predictable text with random text.

ideaPlanned

Planned lab showing how messages can survive noise using parity, redundancy and Hamming distance.

ideaPlanned

Planned model of communication through noise, signal strength and how much information gets through.

ideaPlanned

Planned page connecting bits, encodings, file size and the mathematics of representing information.

A portal for connected mathematical explorations: pattern, surprise, structure, nature and emergence.

Codes, ciphers, primes, modular arithmetic, public keys and secure communication.

Randomness, evidence, simulation, modelling, optimisation and machine learning ideas.

Rhythm, tuning, symmetry, timing, pattern and musical structure through mathematics.

This strand should make invisible digital ideas tangible: bits, noise, compression and trust become things students can play with.