[ivansavz]

+1! I find the whole notion of "typical set" to be absolutely amazing.

I would like to share with you a few pages from the intro to my thesis which cover Shannon's channel coding theorem. There are some nice TiKZ illustrations. http://minireference.com/static/excerpts/Shannon_channel_cod... (it's not super detailed, but the definitions of all the moving parts are given)

[sasvari]

> http://minireference.com/static/excerpts/Shannon_channel_cod...

in case somebody is interested in more than the 15 pages provided in the excerpt, here's ivan's complete thesis:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.4188v1.pdf

[swairshah]

This is really cool. I'm working in systems research, but I'm fascinated by mathematical research in CS. Did you continue with similar work after your PhD, If I may ask?

[ivansavz]

I've since switched my research focus to machine learning (look up latent Dirichlet allocation, very cool stuff). I find a lot of parallels between the two fields: prob. theory, matrices, uncertainty, ...

I'm still following quantum information theory research, but more as a spectator from the sidelines. However, a couple of weeks ago I had to come back to quantum info. theory to "defend" my academic reputation. Our colleagues from TIFR found a bug in one of our papers (http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3645v3) so my coauthor and I had to fix it. It was kind of cool to see I hadn't "lost my quantum skills" after two years of running a business. I guess, once you go quantum you never go back? :)

[avinashv]

Very cool! Shannon's paper was, to be honest, a little out of my comfort zone when I first read it (this isn't really my field academically), and I got a little lost on the first read of this, but someone below posted your full thesis which I will definitely read when I have the time.