book recommendation

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 04:05:31 -0800

I mentioned this book before, but now I want to explicitly recommend that
everyone on this list read _An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and
Its Applications, 2nd Ed._ by Ming Li and Paul Vitanyi. This is a graduate
textbook published by Springer. The first chapter does a great job of
reviewing the basics of probability/measure theory, information theory,
and the theory of computation. The rest of the book deals systematicly
with the subject of algorithmic information theory, which I am convinced
must be central to any theory of everything.

There seems to be some confusion about measure theory and what 'measure'
means. But it can be very easily cleared up by reading the five pages
(18-22) in Li and Vitanyi that deals with the subject.
Received on Fri Jan 15 1999 - 04:08:44 PST