Notes on Coding Problems for Finite State Processes
William Parry · Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society · 1991
The area I wish to survey, albeit in a brief selective fashion, is perhaps not sufficiently well known even to those, such as dynamicists and probabilists, who work in related fields. On the other hand, it is a growing area showing the typical hallmarks of a maturing theory destined for the mainstream of mathematics. The potentiality for significant connections with dynamical systems, probability theory, communication theory and thermodynamics was there from the outset, but it is only recently that the subject has started to call on the developed ideas of other fields rather than on ad hoc methods, although ingenious combinatorics will probably always play their role at some stage of most constructions. The area, then, is a relatively small one but with great promise. Accordingly, this survey is directed toward the general mathematical public rather than to specialists in the field, although (who knows) there may be something of interest for them, and it is especially directed to researchers in contiguous fields. In some respects these notes may be regarded as an updating of the material in [33]. Since I have aimed to reach what I regard as central problems as quickly as