UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
		COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

			     presents


  "Information-theoretic Modelling of Scaling in Communication Systems"

                      Dr. Mikhail Prokopenko 
        (CSIRO, Australia, and Max Planck Institute, Germany)


                    14 October 2009 (Wednesday)
			 Lecture Theatre E351 
		   Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			      3 - 4 pm


		   Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                   Refreshments will be available



Abstract:


The principle of least effort in communications has been shown, by Ferrer i 
Cancho and Sol'e, to explain emergence of power laws (e.g., Zipf's law) in 
human languages. This study sharpens the results of Ferrer i Cancho and Sol'e 
by explicitly solving the problem. The extended model confirms that Zipf's law
law can be found in the transition between referentially useless systems and 
indexical reference systems. Arranging the codes according to Zipf's law
is observed to be the optimal solution for maximizing the referential power 
under the effort constraints. Thus, the model identifies the origins of scaling
in genetic coding --- via a trade-off between efforts of the speaker(s) and 
listener(s). We also extend the principle and the information-theoretic 
model to multiple coding channels. 


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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq