What is MDL?

The purpose of statistical modeling is to discover regularities in observed data. The success in finding such regularities can be measured by the length with which the data can be described. This is the rationale behind the Minimum Description Length (MDL) Principle introduced by Jorma Rissanen (Rissanen, 1978).

'' The MDL Principle is a relatively recent method for inductive inference. The fundamental idea behind the MDL Principle is that any regularity in a given set of data can be used to compress the data, i.e. to describe it using fewer symbols than needed to describe the data literally. '' (Grünwald, 1998)

What is mdl-research.org?

Minimum Description Length on the Web is intended as a source of information for everyone who wants to know more about MDL. The site contains links and references to suggested reading, tutorials, lecture notes, etc. on MDL as well as links to people who are working on MDL and related topics.

	The Reading section contains references to selected papers, books, lecture material, etc., and links to journals and conferences.
	The Demonstrations section illustrates MDL through on-line demonstrations, and provides links to software on the web.
	The People section has links to researchers who are working on MDL and related fields. You can find lots of useful information on their homepages.
	The Related Topics section is a short collection of links to MDL related topics, such as information theory, Bayesian statistics, and learning theory.
	If you have any comments on this site please do not hesitate to give us Feedback.

News & Events

May 8, 2008. A Festschrift in Honor of Jorma Rissanen on the Occasion on his 75th Birthday was presented at the ITW08 workshop.

August 18-20, 2008. Workshop on Information Theoretic Methods in Science and Engineering, Tampere, Finland.

December 7-10, 2008. International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications , Auckland, New Zealand.

February 8-13, 2009. 2009 Information Theory and Applications Workshop, San Diego, USA.

June 10-12, 2009. IEEE Information Theory Workshop on Networking and Information Theory, Volos, Greece.

June 28-July 3, 2009. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Seoul, Korea.

June 28-July 3, 2009. Jorma Rissanen receives the 2009 Claude E. Shannon Award and gives the Shannon Lecture at ISIT 2009. »»» IEEE IT Society Newsletter.

August 17-19, 2009. Workshop on Information Theoretic Methods in Science and Engineering, Tampere, Finland.

October 11-16, 2009. IEEE Information Theory Workshop, Taormina, Italy.

January 6-8, 2010. IEEE Information Theory Workshop, Cairo, Egypt.