Information source (mathematics)

Alright, kiddo! Let me tell you all about information sources with a math analogy. Imagine you have a bag of marbles, and every marble is either red or blue. You pick one marble at a time from the bag without looking, and you write down its color.

Now, when you have picked several marbles, you start to notice a pattern in the colors. You might realize that most of the marbles so far have been red, or that you have picked equal numbers of red and blue marbles. The patterns you observe are the "information" you are gathering about the colors of the marbles.

But some bags of marbles are trickier than others. Let's say that you have two bags of marbles that look identical, but one of them has more red marbles than blue, and the other has equal numbers of both. To figure out which bag you are picking from, you need to gather more information by picking many marbles from the bag.

This is similar to an information source. It could be a person giving you instructions, a computer program generating random numbers, or a message transmitted over the internet. The information you receive might have a pattern or structure that can help you understand something about the source.

But if you want to understand the source itself, you may need to obtain more information. This could involve collecting more data, analyzing it more deeply using math, or asking additional questions to the source.

So, to sum up: an information source is like a bag of marbles that gives you clues about its properties or behavior. Understanding the source might require gathering more information and using math or other tools to gain insights.