Information Theory (Fall 2021)

Class meetings: Tuesday 9:15 -12:00 (first time on September 7, 2021)

The material presented at each lecture is summarized in the lecture notes below. These notes will be updated after each lecture.

Lecture notes (Fall 2021)

Examples for the Lempel-Ziv data compression algorithms LZ77 and LZ78 (Source: Györfi László, Gyôri Sándor, Vajda István "Információ- és kódelmélet", textbook in Hungarian, published by Typotex Kiadó)

Example for the Lempel-Ziv-Welch data compression algorithm (Source: Györfi László, Gyôri Sándor, Vajda István "Információ- és kódelmélet", textbook in Hungarian, published by Typotex Kiadó)

Midterms: There will be two midterms during the semester scheduled as written below. The duration of both midterms will be 90 minutes. They will consist of two "theoretical" questions and four exercises. Given the nature of the first two questions the midterms are closed book and closed notes that is neither book nor notes are allowed to be used when writing them. (As a sample midterm, here is the first midterm of an earlier semester. And here is another "sample midterm" from the material of the first midterm, but the exercises in the latter one are mostly those that we solved in class. Both of these files contain sketches of solutions of the exercises but not on the first page which contains only the problems. It is suggested to look at solutions only after you have solved or at least tried to solve the exercises yourself.)

1st midterm: October 11, 6 p.m., location: lecture room QBF09

2nd midterm: December 1, 6 p.m., location: lecture room QBF09

Here is also a sample second midterm. The problems are on the first page and the other pages contain sketches of solutions. Therefore it is recommended that you turn the page only after having completed your own solution.

Grading:

For getting a valid grade at least 40% of the score should be achieved (separately) on both midterms. The final grade is calculated by averaging the results of the two midterms both taken into account with weight 1/2. Conversion to grades is as follows: from 85% to 100% performance the grade is 5. Below that it is 4 from 70%, 3 from 55%, and 2 from 40%. Below 40% no valid grade is obtained.

Make up tests: There will be one separate make up test for both midterms.

Details:

Retake of 1st midterm: October 25, 6 p.m., location: lecture room QBF09

Retake of 2nd midterm: December 13, 4:15 p.m., location: lecture room QBF09

Rules of how make up midterm scores are taken into account:

If someone takes a make up midterm for improving the result of the corresponding midterm, then the new result will be valid even if it is weaker than the original one. There is one exception to this: If on an original midterm one already achieved 40% of the score then the midterm remains valid (counted with a minimum 40% score) even if the make up score is below 40%.

Final retake possibility (available only for those who have one valid midterm and miss only the other one, it also has a fee) was planned to December 20, 10 a.m.