Student Lectures - All lectures - Information Theory, Lecture 5: Optimal codes and block coding - 3rd Year Student Lecture

In this fifth lecture of eight we are showing from Sam Cohen's Information Theory 3rd year course, we discuss what it means for a code to be optimal and how block coding can allow us to efficiently encode information, provided we take blocks together. We show that optimal codes for finite length sequences must be close to the theoretical optimum. We construct an asymptotically optimal code, based on typical sequences. You can watch the eight lectures from the course as they appear via the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4d5ZtfQonW3iAhXvTYCnoGEeRhxhKHMc You can also watch many other student lectures via our main Student Lectures playlist (also check out specific student lectures playlists): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4d5ZtfQonW0A4VHeiY0gSkX1QEraaacE All first and second year lectures are followed by tutorials where students meet their tutor in pairs to go through the lecture and associated problem sheet and to talk and think more about the maths. Third and fourth year lectures are followed by classes.