Prof. Raymond W. Yeung
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Date: 25 July 2025 (Friday)
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Venue: Rm 801, Ho Sin-hang Engineering Building, CUHK
Abstract:
In the past over two decades, very fruitful results have been obtained in information theory in the studyof the Shannon entropy. This study has led to the discovery of a new class of constraints on the Shannonentropy called non-Shannon-type inequalities. Intimate connections between the Shannon entropy anddifferent branches of mathematics including group theory, combinatorics, Kolmogorov complexity,probability, matrix theory, etc, have been established. All these discoveries were based on a formalityintroduced for constraints on the Shannon entropy, which suggested the possible existence of constraintsthat were not previously known. We assert that the same formality can be applied to inequalities beyondinformation theory. To illustrate the ideas, we revisit through the lens of this formality three fundamentalinequalities in mathematics: the AM-GM inequality in algebra, Markov’s inequality in probability theory,and the Cauchy-Scharwz inequality for inner product spaces. Applications of this formality have thepotential of leading to the discovery of new inequalities and constraints in different branches ofmathematics.
Biography:
Raymond W. Yeung is a Choh-Ming Li Professor of Information Engineering at The Chinese Universityof Hong Kong (CUHK). He received his B.S., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University inElectrical Engineering. Before joining CUHK in 1991, he was a Member of Technical Staff at AT&TBell Laboratories. He has been serving as Co-Director of the Institute of Network Coding at CUHK since2010. He is the author of the books A First Course in Information Theory (Kluwer Academic/PlenumPublishers, 2002) and Information Theory and Network Coding (Springer 2008), which have beenadopted by over 100 institutions around the world. In spring 2014, he gave the first MOOC in the worldon information theory that has reached over 60,000 students to date.
He is a recipient of the 2005 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award, the Friedrich WilhelmBessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2007, the 2016 IEEE Eric E.Sumner Award, the 2018 ACM SIGMOBILE Test-of-Time Paper Award, the 2021 IEEE Richard W.Hamming Medal, and the 2022 Claude E. Shannon Award. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, Hong KongAcademy of Engineering Sciences, Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, and the US National Academyof Inventors.
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