Information, Physics, and Computation
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Author(s): M. Mézard and A. Montanari
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198570837
Format: hardback
569pp
Price: £49.95
Review Date: 20 November 2009
Review: This graduate textbook emphasises the convergence of interests between statistical physics, theoretical computer science/discrete mathematics, and coding/information theory. The book is in five parts, covering: an introduction to information, physics and computation; problems where independence plays an important role—the random energy model, the random code ensemble and number partitioning; ensembles of problems on graphs; belief propagation and the related ‘replica-symmetric’ cavity method; the consequence of long-range correlations, namely the proliferation of pure states and ‘replica-symmetry breaking’.