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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 12.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who devised a way to multiply and divide numbers by adding or subtracting their logarithms?
(a) Thomas Fincke.
(b) Isaac Newton.
(c) Aristotle.
(d) John Napier.

2. Why wasn't Shannon able to teach his computer to play a game?
(a) He thought he would be seen as non-serious.
(b) His boss nixed the idea.
(c) He found it wasn't possible.
(d) It would take to long to teach the machine the game.

3. What did Chaitin mean by a "computable" number?
(a) A number that is not a variable.
(b) A number that could be expressed in a simpler form.
(c) A number that could be expressed in its square root value.
(d) A number that can be calculated.

4. What were the interests of Charles Babbage, a brilliant Englishman who lived in the 19th century?
(a) Mathematics, engineering, cryptography, railroads, and industrial machinery.
(b) The history of discovery and travel.
(c) Philosophy and psychology.
(d) Prose and poetry.

5. At an exclusive meeting in New York City, Shannon commented that the English language had what characteristic?
(a) A special intonation.
(b) A unique dynamism.
(c) A recognizable rhythm.
(d) A specific entropy.

Short Answer Questions

1. What can the amount of information in a message be expressed in?

2. What claim did Shannon make about the predictable redundancy of the English language?

3. What comment did IBM researcher Charles Bennet make about the amount of information in a message?

4. A psychologist named George Miller noticed that people seem to be able to easily remember up to how many items at a time?

5. What caused the errors that were contained in the tables of logarithms that had to be calculated themselves?

(see the answer key)

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