This monograph originated with a course of lectures on information theory which I gave at Cornell University during the academic year 1958-1959. It has no pretensions to exhaustiveness, and, indeed, no pretensions at all. Its purpose is to provide, for mathematicians of some maturity, an easy introduction to the ideas and principal known theorems of a certain body of coding theory. This purpose will be amply achieved if the reader is enabled, through his reading, to read the (sometimes obscurely written) literature and to obtain results of his own. The theory is ob viously in a rapid stage of development; even while this monograph was in manuscript several of its readers obtained important new results. The first chapter is introductory and the subject matter of the monograph is described at the end of the chapter. There does not seem to be a uniquely determined logical order in which the material should be arranged. In determining the final arrangement I tried to obtain an order whichmakes reading easy and yet is not illogical. I can only hope that the resultant compromises do not earn me the criticism that I failed on both counts. There are a very few instances in the monograph where a stated theorem is proved by a method which is based on a result proved only later.
