Exploring Randomness

By Gregory Chaitin

Book Overview

In The Unknowable I use LISP to compare my work on incompleteness with that of G6del and Turing, and in The Limits of Mathematics I use LISP to discuss my work on incompleteness in more detail. In this book we'll use LISP to explore my theory of randomness, called algorithmic information theory (AIT). And when I say "explore" I mean it This book is full of exercises for the reader, ranging from the mathematical equivalent oftrivial "fin- ger warm-ups" for pianists, to substantial programming projects, to questions I can formulate precisely but don't know how to answer, to questions that I don't even know how to formulate precisely I really want you to follow my example and hike offinto the wilder- ness and explore AIT on your own You can stay on the trails that I've blazed and explore the well-known part of AIT, or you can go off on your own and become a fellow researcher, a colleague of mine One way or another, the goal of this book is to make you into a participant, not a passive observer of AlT. In other words, it's too easy to just listen to a recording of AIT, that's not the way to learn music.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852334177
• ISBN13: 9781852334178
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: Springer
• Length: 164 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.2"