Information and Entropy
As taught in: Spring 2008
The Morse telegraph. (Image courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.)
Instructors:
Prof. Paul Penfield
Prof. Seth Lloyd
MIT Course Number:
6.050J / 2.110J
Level:
Undergraduate
Course Description
This course explores the ultimate limits to communication and computation, with an emphasis on the physical nature of
information and information processing. Topics include: information and computation, digital signals, codes and
compression, applications such as biological representations of information, logic circuits, computer architectures, and
algorithmic information, noise, probability, error correction, reversible and irreversible operations, physics of
computation, and quantum computation. The concept of entropy applied to channel capacity and to the second law of
thermodynamics.
Syllabus
Course Meeting Times
2 sessions / week, 2 hours / session
Prerequisites
Physics I: Classical Mechanics (8.01, 8.012, 8.01L, 8.01T, or advanced standing credit)
General Information
This subject is designed for MIT freshmen. Academic credit of 9 units (less than that given by a typical MIT subject) is
provided.
Spring 2008 is the sixth offering of this subject. It was offered in Spring 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and, before
then, three times while being developed, under another number, in Spring 2000, 2001, and 2002.
This subject is offered jointly by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Department
of Mechanical Engineering. Students may sign up for either 2.110J or 6.050J.
Text
The course is taught from a set of notes written by Prof. Penfield, developed over several years of teaching this course.
Each week these readings are supplemented by a plethora of online and print resources. (PDF - 4.4 MB)
Assignments
Problem sets are not distributed. Instead, homework problems are described and assigned in class. In some cases,
solutions are provided after the
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