Can anyone suggest a good book that would serve as an introduction to finite field arithmetic? I keep randomly running into it (e.g. this post), but don't understand it well enough to follow the discussion.
If you would prefer video, then UoCambridge's recording of "Lecture 5: Entropy and Data Compression (IV): Shannon's Source Coding Theorem, Symbol Codes and Arithmetic Coding" is up here: http://videolectures.net/mackay_course_05/
In case you don't find what you're looking for, here are all lectures on "Information Theory, Pattern Recognition, and Neural Networks": http://videolectures.net/course_information_theory_pattern_r...
I'd be remiss not to mention that the lectures are by the late David MacKay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11500221