Information gently but relentlessly drizzles down on us in an invisible, impalpable electric rain.

The solution of the Monty Hall problem hinges on the concept of information, and more specifically, on the relationship between added information and probability.

Underneath the shifting appearances of the world as perceived by our unreliable senses, is there, or is there not, a bedrock of objective reality?

As every bookie knows instinctively, a number such as reliability - a qualitative rather than a quantitative measure - is needed to make the valuation of information practically useful.

In order to understand information, we must define it; bit in order to define it, we must first understand it. Where to start?

Numbers instill a feeling for the lie of the land, and furnish grist for the mathematical mill that is the physicist's principal tool.

Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, invented a way to measure 'the amount of information' in a message without defining the word 'information' itself, nor even addressing the question of the meaning of the message.