Thomas M. Cover
ˆkoÊŠvÉ™r(August 7, 1938 – March 26, 2012) was an American information theorist and professor jointly in the Departments of
Electrical Engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
and
Statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. He devoted almost his entire career to developing the relationship between information theory and statistics.
Early life and education
He received his
B.S.
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
in Physics from
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
in 1960 and
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in electrical engineering from
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
in 1964.
Career
Cover was President of the
IEEE Information Theory Society
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
and was a Fellow of the
Institute of Mathematical Statistics
The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...
and of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
. He received the Outstanding Paper Award in Information Theory for his 1972 paper "Broadcast Channels"; he was selected in 1990 as the
Shannon Lecturer, regarded as the highest honor in information theory; in 1997 he received the
IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal is presented annually to up to three persons, for outstanding achievements in information sciences, information systems and information technology. The recipients receive a gold medal, together with a replica in ...
; and in 2003 he was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
.
During his 48-year career as a professor of Electrical Engineering and Statistics at Stanford University, he graduated 64 PhD students, authored over 120 journal papers in learning, information theory, statistical complexity, pattern recognition, and
portfolio theory
Modern portfolio theory (MPT), or mean-variance analysis, is a mathematical framework for assembling a portfolio of assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk. It is a formalization and extension of diversificatio ...
; and he partnered with
Joy A. Thomas
Joy Aloysius Thomas (1 January 1963 – 28 September 2020) was an Indian-born American information theorist, author and a Senior Data scientist at Google. He was known for his contributions to information theory and was the co-author of ''Ele ...
to coauthor the book ''Elements of Information Theory'',
which has become the most widely used textbook as an introduction to the topic since the publication of its first edition in 1991.
He was also coeditor of the book ''Open Problems in Communication and Computation''.
Selected works
*
*
* Van Campenhout, Jan. and Cover, T. (1981).
Maximum entropy and conditional probability'. Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on
* Cover, T. (1974).
The Best Two Independent Measurements Are Not the Two Best'. Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on
* Cover, T. and Hart, P. (1967).
Nearest neighbor pattern classification''.Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on.
* Cover, T. (1965).
Geometrical and Statistical Properties of Systems of Linear Inequalities with Applications in Pattern Recognition'. Electronic Computers, IEEE Transactions on
See also
*
k-nearest neighbors algorithm
In statistics, the ''k''-nearest neighbors algorithm (''k''-NN) is a non-parametric supervised learning method first developed by Evelyn Fix and Joseph Hodges in 1951, and later expanded by Thomas Cover. It is used for classification and regres ...
*
Cover's theorem Cover's theorem is a statement in computational learning theory and is one of the primary theoretical motivations for the use of non-linear kernel methods in machine learning applications. It is so termed after the information theorist Thomas M. Cov ...
References
External links
Thomas M. Cover Stanford University homepage*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cover, Thomas M.
1938 births
2012 deaths
American statisticians
Fellow Members of the IEEE
Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
People from San Bernardino, California
Probability theorists
Stanford University School of Engineering alumni
Stanford University School of Engineering faculty