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Shannon's Theory Finally Broken

Posted by Hemos on

Mike Monett writes, "Claude E. Shannon published A Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1948, and his work has successfully resisted all attempts to find a loophole. Since then, the communications industry has been guided by a term called "signal-to-noise ratio," and negative values are frowned upon. This sets the limit for communication in the presence of unwanted noise added to a signal as it is transmitted from one place to another. But a loophole has been finally discovered. I have found a method of recovering arbitrary signals buried in noise. An example is available here. No information on how it is done, but a brief summary of the good and bad features of the discovery. Will it affect you? There is a good possibility. Will the effect be good? Probably. Will my site be taken down by the Slashdot effect? There is a good chance of that also. "

4 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. Shannon's Theorem by TimoT · · Score: 2

    As I understand it this doesn't break Shannons theorem (and it says so on the page). AFAIK, Shannon's Theorem says that the amount of information sent in a given amount of bits (or in the continuous version combination of bandwidth and time) depends on the quality of the statistical model of the source (and the noise present on the channel).

    An event of probability p requires -log2 p bits to encode in it's most efficient form. There's no lower limit to the amount of bits needed to specify a sequence of events provided that you can estimate the next event's probability close to 1 and succeed every time. If you have a completely accurate model, 0 bits are needed. So this might be an improvement on the statistical model of the source. The theory of information is sound; you can't disprove a mathematical theory once it is proven correct and the proof has no mistakes. The headline has a bit of unwarranted sensationalism :)

  2. No method? Color me suspicious by Proteus · · Score: 2
    Pardon me for my skepticism, but if no method - or even a proof for the method - is published, how can we know that this is not flawed? I would like to look at some pure data, and a well-structured methodology before I lend any credence to this.

    On a lighter note - even if it doesn't really work, wanna bet it gets a patent? :P

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  3. Journals by Detritus · · Score: 2
    If it is real, he should write a paper and submit it to the appropriate IEEE journal.

    I'll believe it when I read about it in a reputable peer-reviewed journal.

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  4. Yikes! Does nobody check these things? by Spiork · · Score: 2

    Well, it looks like the /. story review board isn't doing a very good job. The guy posting this stuff about having broken Shannon's Theorum is currently being ripped apart by sci.electronics.design regulars.

    His postings are funny, you should deja.com them.

    In short: he hasn't broken the theorum, he has yet to produce code, and the excuses he's serving up are priceless. His announcement message was the kind of thing one reads while chuckling.

    So, sorry, it isn't going to change the world, /., or really anything at all. (as suggested in the news article writeup)