CCB Short Course: Intro to Information Theory in Biology

Lecturer: Henry Mattingly, Associate Research Scientist, Biophysical Modeling

In the 1940s, Claude Shannon invented information theory, a
fundamental tool for quantifying statistical uncertainty and
inference. The fact that it deals only with probability distributions,
and not with detailed mechanisms, makes it widely applicable in
biological sciences and beyond—both for quantifying inferences BY
biological systems and inferences ABOUT biological systems that we
study. But this fact is both a strength and a weakness. What can it
do? What can it not do? What are good information theory research
questions? This course will introduce the basic concepts and provide a
non-exhaustive survey of how information theory has been used in
biology.