Symbolic Dynamics and Its Applications: American Mathematical Society, Short Course, January 4-5, 2002, San Diego, California

Symbolic dynamics originated as a tool for analyzing dynamical systems and flows by discretizing space as well as time. The development of information theory gave impetus to the study of symbol sequences as objects in their own right. Today, symbolic dynamics has expanded to encompass multi-dimensional arrays of symbols and has found diverse applications both within and beyond mathematics. This volume is based on the AMS Short Course on Symbolic Dynamics and its Applications. It contains introductory articles on the fundamental ideas of the field and on some of its applications.Topics include the use of symbolic dynamics techniques in coding theory and in complex dynamics, the relation between the theory of multi-dimensional systems and the dynamics of tilings, and strong shift equivalence theory. Contributors to the volume are experts in the field and are clear expositors. The book is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in symbolic dynamics and its applications