Abstract
Suppose we want to describe a given object by a finite binary string. We do not care whether the object has many descriptions; however, each description should describe but one object. From among all descriptions of an object we can take the length of the shortest description as a measure of the object's complexity. It is natural to call an object ‘simple’ if it has at least one short description, and to call it ‘complex’ if all of its descriptions are long.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Li, M., Vitányi, P. (2008). Inductive Reasoning. In: An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications. Texts in Computer Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-49820-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-49820-1_5
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-33998-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-49820-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)