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Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is a sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message, recorded as signs, or transmitted as signals. Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed. Therefore, in a general sense, information is "knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance."

From the stance of information theory, information is taken as a sequence of symbols from an alphabet, say an input alphabet χ, and an output alphabet ϒ. Information processing consists of an input-output function that maps any input sequence from χ into an output sequence from ϒ. The mapping may be probabilistic or determinate. It may have memory or be memoryless.

Information cannot be predicted and resolves uncertainty. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its probability of occurrence and is inversely proportional to that. The more uncertain an event, the more information is required to resolve uncertainty of that event. The amount of information is measured in bits. The concept that information is the message has different meanings in different contexts. Thus the concept of information becomes closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, understanding, stimulation, pattern, perception, representation, and entropy. (Full article...)

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