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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 15 and Epilogue.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Gleick presents his intention to trace the growth of both the concept of information and information itself by identifying what key elements?
(a) Society and culture.
(b) Nation and type of governance.
(c) Origin and reliability of sources.
(d) The people and thinking that contributed to it.

2. What society created the first numeric tables?
(a) Babylonian.
(b) Roman.
(c) Egyptian.
(d) Chinese.

3. What was used in the earliest known method of writing language?
(a) Pictures.
(b) Zeroes and ones.
(c) Numbers.
(d) Codes.

4. What does the size of the algorithm indicate about the number?
(a) Its capacity for computation.
(b) Its simplicity.
(c) Its complexity.
(d) Its computable nature.

5. Why is the randomness of numbers difficult to define?
(a) A number may be random to some but not to others.
(b) Numbers are infinite.
(c) Numbers send different messages.
(d) Numbers have an unpredictability.

Short Answer Questions

1. in what year did John Carrington, an English missionary, publish "The Talking Drums of Africa"?

2. Why were there so many message errors with the early telegraph?

3. What did Chaitin mean by a "computable" number?

4. The invention of what technology would make Shannon's theory of a computing machine practical?

5. What did Shannon bring to one of his meetings?

(see the answer key)

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