This is the thesis behind the "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" course that was taught at Cambridge University.

> Why unify information theory and machine learning? Because they are two sides of the same coin. In the 1960s, a single field, cybernetics, was populated by information theorists, computer scientists, and neuroscientists, all studying common problems. Information theory and machine learning still belong together. Brains are the ultimate compression and communication systems. And the state-of-the-art algorithms for both data compression and error-correcting codes use the same tools as machine learning.

Book (creative commons): https://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html

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