Gregory. J. Chaitin – författare

Chaitin, the inventor of algorithmic information theory, presents in this book the strongest possible version of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, using an information theoretic approach based on the size of computer programs. One half of the book is concerned with studying the halting probability of a universal computer if its program is chosen by tossing a coin. The other half is concerned with encoding the halting probability as an algebraic equation in integers, a so-called exponential diophantine equation.

G. J. Chaitin is at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York. He has shown that God plays dice not only in quantum mechanics, but even in the foundations of mathematics, where Chaitin discovered mathematical facts that are true for no reason, that are true by accident. This book collects his most wide-ranging and non-technical lectures and interviews, and it will be of interest to anyone concerned with the philosophy of mathematics, with the similarities and differences between physics and mathematics, or with the creative process and mathematics as an art."Chaitin has put a scratch on the rock of eternity."Jacob T. Schwartz, Courant Institute, New York University, USA"(Chaitin is) one of the great ideas men of mathematics and computer science."Marcus Chown, author of The Magic Furnace, in NEW SCIENTIST"Finding the right formalization is a large component of the art of doing great mathematics."John Casti, author of Mathematical Mountaintops, on Godel, Turing and Chaitin in NATURE"What mathematicians over the centuries - from the ancients, through Pascal, Fermat, Bernoulli, and de Moivre, to Kolmogorov and Chaitin - have discovered, is that it ÄrandomnessÜ is a profoundly rich concept."Jerrold W. Grossman in the MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER

In The Unknowable I use LISP to compare my work on incompleteness with that of G6del and Turing, and in The Limits of Mathematics I use LISP to discuss my work on incompleteness in more detail. In this book we''ll use LISP to explore my theory of randomness, called algorithmic information theory (AIT). And when I say "explore" I mean it! This book is full of exercises for the reader, ranging from the mathematical equivalent oftrivial "fin­ ger warm-ups" for pianists, to substantial programming projects, to questions I can formulate precisely but don''t know how to answer, to questions that I don''t even know how to formulate precisely! I really want you to follow my example and hike offinto the wilder­ ness and explore AIT on your own! You can stay on the trails that I''ve blazed and explore the well-known part of AIT, or you can go off on your own and become a fellow researcher, a colleague of mine! One way or another, the goal of this book is to make you into a participant, not a passive observer of AlT. In other words, it''s too easy to just listen to a recording of AIT, that''s not the way to learn music.

In The Unknowable I use LISP to compare my work on incompleteness with that of G6del and Turing, and in The Limits of Mathematics I use LISP to discuss my work on incompleteness in more detail. In this book we'll use LISP to explore my theory of randomness, called algorithmic information theory (AIT). And when I say "explore" I mean it! This book is full of exercises for the reader, ranging from the mathematical equivalent oftrivial "fin­ ger warm-ups" for pianists, to substantial programming projects, to questions I can formulate precisely but don't know how to answer, to questions that I don't even know how to formulate precisely! I really want you to follow my example and hike offinto the wilder­ ness and explore AIT on your own! You can stay on the trails that I've blazed and explore the well-known part of AIT, or you can go off on your own and become a fellow researcher, a colleague of mine! One way or another, the goal of this book is to make you into a participant, not a passive observer of AlT. In other words, it's too easy to just listen to a recording of AIT, that's not the way to learn music.

A collection of his most wide-ranging and non-technical lectures and interviews

As a teenager, Greg created independently of Kolmogorov and Solomonoff, what we call today algorithmic information theory, a sub­ ject of which he is the main architect. My favorite portrait of Greg can be found in John Horgan's-a writer for Scientific American-1996 book The End 01 Science. Ladies and Gentlemen, Greg Chaitin!

In The Unknowable I use LISP to compare my work on incompleteness with that of G6del and Turing, and in The Limits of Mathematics I use LISP to discuss my work on incompleteness in more detail. In this book we'll use LISP to explore my theory of randomness, called algorithmic information theory (AIT). And when I say "explore" I mean it! This book is full of exercises for the reader, ranging from the mathematical equivalent oftrivial "fin­ ger warm-ups" for pianists, to substantial programming projects, to questions I can formulate precisely but don't know how to answer, to questions that I don't even know how to formulate precisely! I really want you to follow my example and hike offinto the wilder­ ness and explore AIT on your own! You can stay on the trails that I've blazed and explore the well-known part of AIT, or you can go off on your own and become a fellow researcher, a colleague of mine! One way or another, the goal of this book is to make you into a participant, not a passive observer of AlT. In other words, it's too easy to just listen to a recording of AIT, that's not the way to learn music.

A collection of his most wide-ranging and non-technical lectures and interviews

This book is the final version of a course on algorithmic information theory and the epistemology of mathematics and physics. It discusses Einstein and Goedel's views on the nature of mathematics in the light of information theory, and sustains the thesis that mathematics is quasi-empirical. There is a foreword by Cris Calude of the University of Auckland, and supplementary material is available at the author's web site. The special feature of this book is that it presents a new "hands on" didatic approach using LISP and Mathematica software. The reader will be able to derive an understanding of the close relationship between mathematics and physics. "The Limits of Mathematics is a very personal and idiosyncratic account of Greg Chaitin's entire career in developing algorithmic information theory. The combination of the edited transcripts of his three introductory lectures maintains all the energy and content of the oral presentations, while the material on AIT itself gives a full explanation of how to implement Greg's ideas on real computers for those who want to try their hand at furthering the theory. " (John Casti, Santa Fe Institute)

Dr Gregory Chaitin, one of the world's leading mathematicians, is best known for his discovery of the remarkable Ω number, a concrete example of irreducible complexity in pure mathematics which shows that mathematics is infinitely complex. In this volume, Chaitin discusses the evolution of these ideas, tracing them back to Leibniz and Borel as well as Gödel and Turing.This book contains 23 non-technical papers by Chaitin, his favorite tutorial and survey papers, including Chaitin's three Scientific American articles. These essays summarize a lifetime effort to use the notion of program-size complexity or algorithmic information content in order to shed further light on the fundamental work of Gödel and Turing on the limits of mathematical methods, both in logic and in computation. Chaitin argues here that his information-theoretic approach to metamathematics suggests a quasi-empirical view of mathematics that emphasizes the similarities rather than the differences between mathematics and physics. He also develops his own brand of digital philosophy, which views the entire universe as a giant computation, and speculates that perhaps everything is discrete software, everything is 0's and 1's.Chaitin's fundamental mathematical work will be of interest to philosophers concerned with the limits of knowledge and to physicists interested in the nature of complexity.

This essential companion volume to Chaitin's highly successful "The Limits of Mathematics", also published by Springer, gives a brilliant historical survey of the work of this century on the foundations of mathematics, in which the author was a major participant. The Unknowable is a very readable and concrete introduction to Chaitin's ideas, and it includes a detailed explanation of the programming language used by Chaitin in both volumes. It will enable computer users to interact with the author's proofs and discover for themselves how they work. The software for The Unknowable can be downloaded from the author's Web site.

This book contains in easily accessible form all the main ideas of the creator and principal architect of algorithmic information theory. This expanded second edition has added thirteen abstracts, a 1988 Scientific American Article, a transcript of a EUROPALIA 89 lecture, an essay on biology, and an extensive bibliography. Its new larger format makes it easier to read. Chaitin's ideas are a fundamental extension of those of Gödel and Turning and have exploded some basic assumptions of mathematics and thrown new light on the scientific method, epistemology, probability theory, and of course computer science and information theory.

This book contains in easily accessible form all the main ideas of the creator and principal architect of algorithmic information theory. This expanded second edition has added thirteen abstracts, a 1988 Scientific American Article, a transcript of a EUROPALIA 89 lecture, an essay on biology, and an extensive bibliography. Its new larger format makes it easier to read. Chaitin's ideas are a fundamental extension of those of Gödel and Turning and have exploded some basic assumptions of mathematics and thrown new light on the scientific method, epistemology, probability theory, and of course computer science and information theory.

In this mathematical autobiography, Gregory Chaitin presents a technical survey of his work and a nontechnical discussion of its significance. The volume is an essential companion to the earlier collection of Chaitin's papers Information, Randomness and Incompleteness, also published by World Scientific.The technical survey contains many new results, including a detailed discussion of LISP program size and new versions of Chaitin's most fundamental information-theoretic incompleteness theorems. The nontechnical part includes the lecture given by Chaitin in Gšdel's classroom at the University of Vienna, a transcript of a BBC TV interview, and articles from New Scientist, La Recherche, and the Mathematical Intelligencer.

In this mathematical autobiography, Gregory Chaitin presents a technical survey of his work and a nontechnical discussion of its significance. The volume is an essential companion to the earlier collection of Chaitin's papers Information, Randomness and Incompleteness, also published by World Scientific.The technical survey contains many new results, including a detailed discussion of LISP program size and new versions of Chaitin's most fundamental information-theoretic incompleteness theorems. The nontechnical part includes the lecture given by Chaitin in Gšdel's classroom at the University of Vienna, a transcript of a BBC TV interview, and articles from New Scientist, La Recherche, and the Mathematical Intelligencer.