Field of mathematics that studies the problems of signal transmission, reception, and processing.It stems from Claude E. Shannon 's mathematical methods for measuring the degree of order (non randomness) in a signal, which drew largely on probability theory and stochastic processes and led to techniques for determining a source's rate of information production, a channel's capacity to handle information, and the average amount of information in a given type of message. Crucial to the design of communications systems, these techniques have important applications in linguistics, psychology, and even literary theory.