Claude Shannon may not be a household name, but every time we use an electronic device to send information, it is made possible by the work of this jovial mathematician. Shannon’s pioneering work in information theory ushered in a new era of communication at a time when messages were being sent over “noisy” telephone systems plagued by signal and data loss. To tackle the problem, he had to define what information actually was.
For Shannon, information was tied to entropy, or the amount of uncertainty in a variable. To loosely summarize a profound concept, information is essentially the number of possible outcomes. The more uncertain an event, the greater the number of possible outcomes, and thus, the more information in the system. In the realm of communications, quantifying information opened the door to optimizing how a message is sent and received.
In this issue of GT, contributors present some variability in surgical techniques and the management of disease states such as angle-closure glaucoma. The possibilities and nuances in approach—and therefore the amount of information—may seem overwhelming, but the pearls shared can help to isolate what is usable and applicable. They may also provide insight into alternative ways to manage a scenario—and the more meaningful information available, the better the possible outcomes.
