[nicholast]

He was also a jazz musician (the clarinet), a somewhat accomplished juggler, a devoted unicycle enthusiast, and left behind a basement full of contraptions he was building in various states of finish - like the electronic mouse navigating a maze, a chess playing machine, and all other kinds of curiosities. His papers are coherent and still relevant to this day and follow the birth of each of these fields like information theory and artificial intelligence. Who knows what else he might have been working on at Bell labs that we may not be privy too.

[JoeDaDude]

Not explicitly mentioned in TFA is that Shannon was the first to apply the Minimax algorithm [1] for computer chess. The Minimax algorithm, later streamlined to include alpha-beta pruning, has been a key component in AI game playing machines ever since.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax [2]. https://stanford.edu/~cpiech/cs221/apps/deepBlue.html

I've posted this before, a compiled list of the machines and gadgets Claude Shannon built to experiment with simple AI ideas to play games [3]. Apologies for the repeat:

[3]. https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man...

[sasvari]

Interesting episode from Tim Harford's Cautionary Tales podcast about Claude Shannon and his various other interests:

https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/fritterin-away-genius/

[nicholast]

BS

[jacobriis]

"His papers are coherent"

High praise for one of the greatest minds of his generation

[melissalobos]

It actually is, most papers written today are cut and paste jobs with multiple people writing one section. The quality and focus from one paragraph to another can change. I think the lack of computers helped a bit as well for the quality of earlier papers. There used to be a lot of effort needed to publish a single paper since computers couldn't do typesetting.

Aside from that he has what comes off as a very clear mind. If you haven't I would highly recommend reading his papers. Coherent is a good adjective to describe his work.

[thewarrior]

They are easy to understand even for average people.

[vernie]

Damn, I was happier not knowing about the juggling and unicycle stuff.