Most of the books on coding and information theory are prepared for those who already have good background knowledge in probability and random processes. It is therefore hard to find a ready-to-use textbook in these two subjects suitable for engineering students at the freshmen level, or for non-engineering major students who are interested in knowing, at least conceptually, how information is encoded and decoded in practice and the theories behind it. Since communications has become a part of modern life, such knowledge is more and more of practical significance. For this reason, when our school requested us to offer a preliminary course in coding and information theory for students who do not have any engineering background, we saw this as an opportunity and initiated the plan to write a textbook.

In preparing this material, we hope that, in addition to the aforementioned purpose, the book can also serve as a beginner's guide that inspires and attracts students to enter this interesting area. The material covered in this book has been carefully selected to keep the amount of background mathematics and electrical engineering to a minimum. At most, simple calculus plus a little probability theory are used here, and anything beyond that is developed as needed. Its first version has been used as a textbook in the 2009 summer freshmen course Conversion Between Information and Codes: A Historical View at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. The course was attended by 47 students, including 12 from departments other than electrical engineering.