Statistical mechanics of typical set decoding

Statistical mechanics of typical set decoding.

The performance of "typical set (pairs) decoding" for ensembles of Gallager's linear code is investigated using statistical physics. In this decoding method, errors occur, either when the information transmission is corrupted by atypical noise, or when multiple typical sequences satisfy the parity check equation as provided by the received corrupted codeword. We show that the average error rate...

How Typical! An Epistemological Approach to Typicality in Statistical Mechanics

The recent use of typicality in statistical mechanics for foundational purposes has stirred an important debate involving both philosophers and physicists. While this debate customarily focuses on technical issues, in this paper I try to approach the problem from an epistemological angle. The discussion is driven by two questions: (1) What does typicality add to the concept of measure? (2) What...

Statistical Mechanics of the Minimum Dominating Set Problem

The minimum dominating set problem has wide applications in network science and related fields. It consists of assembling a node set of global minimum size such that any node of the network is either in this set or is adjacent to at least one node of this set. Although this is a difficult optimization problem in general, we show it can be exactly solved by a generalized leaf-removal process if ...

Statistical Mechanics

Statistical Mechanics

where pi ≡ p(x = i). If only M of the K states have non-zero probability and that probability is 1/M then S = logM . In this special case the entropy is the log of the number of occupied states. An analog of this special case in the continuous domain occurs in Liouville’s Theorem. This states that if the volume of phase space (i.e. of the x variable, but now multivariate and continuous) is some...