---
product_id: 4850862
title: "An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics)"
price: "€ 48.91"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 9
url: https://www.desertcart.fi/products/4850862-an-introduction-to-information-theory-symbols-signals-and-noise-dover
store_origin: FI
region: Finland
---

# An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics)

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desertcart.com: An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics): 9780486240619: Pierce, John R.: Books

Review: Brilliant and thought provoking - I wish every topic had a book like this one to introduce newcomers. Information theory is itself fairly interesting, but I found that the author used intriguing examples from a broad variety of disciplines to capture the reader's attention. He also has something of a self-deprecating writing style that will bring a smile to your face once or twice in each chapter. I loved the discussion of language and letter frequency, and it was even more interesting since now easily accessible tools exist (like Google's ngram) which allow you to explore some of the data and concepts first hand. I've explored various error correction/detection schemes online to gain a cursory understanding - this book did far more for me thanks to the simple and straightforward examples. I feel confident I could write my own (albeit basic) error correction code now, thanks solely to this book. I admit that the n-dimensional hypersphere-based code correction is somewhat beyond an easy implementation for me, but still, the explanation is engaging and I feel confident that I can explain the basics of geometrical error correction codes on a high level, which will be useful to me in my course of work. Anyhow, this kind of book, with enough depth to be challenging for someone with a basic science background yet still casual enough to read a bit here and there without getting lost, is a rare find. Well worth the very reasonable price. I wager that even someone with little interest in science or math could find some very interesting gems here. Have a deamy day.
Review: Very good book on complex topic - Very good book on complex topic. I feel, the book can be interesting both for specialist in fields like IT, telecom, signal processing etc. and laymen interested in mathematical background of communication. For me, the book was very good refresher of my knowledge I gained at university (I studied mathematics, computer sciences and economics). Moreover, despite my backgroud, I learned many new interesting things about natural languages and especially connection between information theory and thermodynamics. The author starts the book a litte bit philosophically, discussing what is a theory and how to construct it, then he switches to history of information theory and starts to describe basics concepts like a information source, basics of coding and finite state machine. Then he explains entropy, the metric of information content (I appreciated very friendly explanantion of this sometimes tricky concept). After it, he goes to more difficult parts like error correction and noise. In chapter called "Information Theory and Physics", the author brings derivation of minimal amount of energy needed to transmit some amount of information (here the reader can find above mentioned connection between information theory and thermodynamics). Escpecially this part I found extremelly interesting. In following chapters, the author discusses relation between information theory and cybernetics (this part is more or less about programming and using computers, however, because of publishing year 1980 this part is out of date), psychology (experiments related to ability of human beings to share and transmit information are described) and art (the author describes possibilities of producing music and paintings by computers, again this part is little bit out of date but it could be interesting for reader dealing with computer history). What, from my point of view, does the book down is large number of typos, even in formulas (e.g. 1+P/N is interchanged with (1+P)/N etc.). Overall, despite the typos, the book is worth reading. Moreover price around $5 is nice as well.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #578,171 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #57 in Information Theory #199 in Probability & Statistics (Books) #287 in Reference (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (355) |
| Dimensions  | 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches |
| Edition  | Subsequent |
| ISBN-10  | 0486240614 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0486240619 |
| Item Weight  | 10.4 ounces |
| Language  | English |
| Part of series  | Dover Books on Mathematics |
| Print length  | 336 pages |
| Publication date  | November 1, 1980 |
| Publisher  | Dover Publications |

## Images

![An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/815kf-DX1vL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Brilliant and thought provoking
*by A***N on April 19, 2014*

I wish every topic had a book like this one to introduce newcomers. Information theory is itself fairly interesting, but I found that the author used intriguing examples from a broad variety of disciplines to capture the reader's attention. He also has something of a self-deprecating writing style that will bring a smile to your face once or twice in each chapter. I loved the discussion of language and letter frequency, and it was even more interesting since now easily accessible tools exist (like Google's ngram) which allow you to explore some of the data and concepts first hand. I've explored various error correction/detection schemes online to gain a cursory understanding - this book did far more for me thanks to the simple and straightforward examples. I feel confident I could write my own (albeit basic) error correction code now, thanks solely to this book. I admit that the n-dimensional hypersphere-based code correction is somewhat beyond an easy implementation for me, but still, the explanation is engaging and I feel confident that I can explain the basics of geometrical error correction codes on a high level, which will be useful to me in my course of work. Anyhow, this kind of book, with enough depth to be challenging for someone with a basic science background yet still casual enough to read a bit here and there without getting lost, is a rare find. Well worth the very reasonable price. I wager that even someone with little interest in science or math could find some very interesting gems here. Have a deamy day.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very good book on complex topic
*by M***Y on July 22, 2018*

Very good book on complex topic. I feel, the book can be interesting both for specialist in fields like IT, telecom, signal processing etc. and laymen interested in mathematical background of communication. For me, the book was very good refresher of my knowledge I gained at university (I studied mathematics, computer sciences and economics). Moreover, despite my backgroud, I learned many new interesting things about natural languages and especially connection between information theory and thermodynamics. The author starts the book a litte bit philosophically, discussing what is a theory and how to construct it, then he switches to history of information theory and starts to describe basics concepts like a information source, basics of coding and finite state machine. Then he explains entropy, the metric of information content (I appreciated very friendly explanantion of this sometimes tricky concept). After it, he goes to more difficult parts like error correction and noise. In chapter called "Information Theory and Physics", the author brings derivation of minimal amount of energy needed to transmit some amount of information (here the reader can find above mentioned connection between information theory and thermodynamics). Escpecially this part I found extremelly interesting. In following chapters, the author discusses relation between information theory and cybernetics (this part is more or less about programming and using computers, however, because of publishing year 1980 this part is out of date), psychology (experiments related to ability of human beings to share and transmit information are described) and art (the author describes possibilities of producing music and paintings by computers, again this part is little bit out of date but it could be interesting for reader dealing with computer history). What, from my point of view, does the book down is large number of typos, even in formulas (e.g. 1+P/N is interchanged with (1+P)/N etc.). Overall, despite the typos, the book is worth reading. Moreover price around $5 is nice as well.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great book on information theory
*by J***N on December 17, 2012*

After reading Claude Shannon's 1948 paper laying out the foundations of information theory, I found myself wanting to know more about the subject. I purchased this book because it is very cheap and had great reviews. I was hoping for something a bit more technical to help me understand Shannon's paper more thoroughly but this book was not what I was looking for. For a very well written and much more mathematical treatment, I would suggest picking up Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms by MacKay, which also covers many interesting and related topics. With this being said, I still loved this book. The author does a good job of presenting the material, some of which follows Shannon's original paper and some if which is original work, in a very clear and interesting way. Even though this book is rather old it is still relevant to the field it covers. Best of all, it would be interesting to someone of any mathematical maturity from those who have not done any since high school to those who use it everyday in their work. This is a rare feat in my opinion and makes this book a very good read.

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*Last updated: 2026-03-19*