1996 IT Society Paper Award

The 1996 Information Theory Society Paper Award has been awarded to Frans Willems, Yuri Shtarkov and Tjalling Tjalkens for their paper entitled ``The Context-Tree Weighting Method: Basic Properties'' published in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Volume IT-41, No. 3, May 1995.

The Information Theory Society Paper Award, consisting of a certificate and honorarium, is given annually for an outstanding publication in the field of information theory published anywhere during the preceding two-year period. Its purpose is to recognize exceptional publcations in the field and to stimulate interest in, and encourage contributions to, the discipline.

Reflections on the Prize Paper:
``The Context-Tree Weighting Method: Basic Properties''

Frans Willems, Yuri Shtarkov, and Tjalling Tjalkens

• Introduction
• Sources
• Codes
• Redundancy
• Arithmetic coding
• One unknown parameter
• Tree sources
• Known model, unknown parameters
• Weighting alternatives
• Unknown model
  • Context tree
  • CTW algorithm
  • Analysis
  • Optimality
  • MDL behavior
  • Complexity
• Text compression
• Conclusion
• References
• About this document ...