Redundancy


Redundancy in information systems ensures that messages are still understandable even if part of the portions are lost. Thus, the sentence

Yo an st ll u d rstan thi mes ag wit ut t o m ch tr ble

remainds understandable, despite the loss of about 30% of its letters.

Redundancy is the measure of what percentage of information can be randomly removed from a message without making the message impossible to understand. The redundancy of the English language is claimed to be over 50%.

Source: Rapoport, Anatol. 1953. What is information? ETC: a review of general semantics. 10(4). Reprinted as chapter 1 in Saracevic, Tefko (ed.). Introduction to information science. New York, R. R. Bowker, 1970. pp. 5-12.


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