The offprint issue

Shannon, Claude E. [Elwood]

A Note on a Partial Ordering for Communication Channels [offprint]

[New York, NY]: Academic Press, Inc. December 1959. [1-blank], 390-397, [1-blank] pages. Self-wrappers. 9 x 6 1/8 inches. Stapled at the spine. Creased corners. Not issued in separate wrappers (reprint statement at the top of the first page). Very Good. Wraps. [28683]


"Information and Control,” Volume 1, No 4, December 1959, first published this paper, here offered in offprint form.

"A recent contribution of C. E. Shannon [ this paper ] has provided a basis of comparison for some communications channels through their stochastic matrices. While it is early to speculate on possible applications of Shannon's original idea, it appears that it will encompass some important areas of investigation. Algebraic operations on stochastic matrices and their physical interpretation seem to indicate an area where information theory and systems theory considerations could join forces." (Reza, p. 462)

"A partial ordering id defined for discrete memoryless channels. It is transitive and is preserved under channel operations of addition and multiplication. The main result proved is that if K1 and K2 are such channels and K1 [is a superset of] K2, if a code exists for K2, there exists at least as good a code for K1, in the sense of the probability of error." (abstract)

PROVENANCE: The personal files of Claude E. Shannon (unmarked). There were five examples of this item in Shannon's files.

REFERENCES:
Sloane and Wyner, "Claude Elwood Shannon Collected Papers," #115.
D. Slepian, editor, "Key Papers in the Development of Information Theory," IEEE Press, NY, 1974, pp 146-148.
Reza, Fazlollah M., "An Introduction to Information Theory," Dover: 1994.

Price: $350.00