
Analog Coding, List Decoding, Bandwidth, and Mean Dimension
Elon Lindenstrauss, a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study and Hebrew University, gives this Computer Science/Discrete Mathematics Seminar on how tools from dynamical systems connect to coding theory. The talk centers on mean dimension, an invariant originally developed to measure the complexity of dynamical systems, and traces its surprising links to analog coding, list decoding, and the bandwidth of communication channels. Lindenstrauss works through how embedding problems in dynamics parallel capacity and decoding questions in information theory, drawing on his background in ergodic theory to build the connection from first principles. Recorded at Simonyi Hall at the Institute for Advanced Study, the session runs over two hours and is pitched at a research audience already comfortable with measure-theoretic dynamics and basic coding theory, building toward open questions linking the two fields rather than a survey of settled results.