'The book is outstanding and admirable in many respects ...is necessary reading for all kinds of readers from undergraduate students to top authorities in the field' - "Journal of Symbolic Logic". Written by two experts in the field, this is the only comprehensive and unified treatment of the central ideas and applications of Kolmogorov complexity. The book presents a thorough treatment of the subject with a wide range of illustrative applications. Such applications include the randomness of finite objects or infinite sequences, Martin-Loef tests for randomness, information theory, computational learning theory, the complexity of algorithms, and the thermodynamics of computing. It will be ideal for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers in computer science, mathematics, cognitive sciences, philosophy, artificial intelligence, statistics, and physics. The book is self-contained in that it contains the basic requirements from mathematics and computer science. Included are also numerous problem sets, comments, source references, and hints to solutions of problems. New topics in this edition include Omega numbers, Kolmogorov-Loveland randomness, universal learning, communication complexity, Kolmogorov's random graphs, time-limited universal distribution, Shannon information and others.

李明，http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~mli/），加拿大計算生物學（生物信息學）學會主席，現任加拿大滑鐵盧大學計算機係教授。

Paul Vitanyi，（http://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulv/），荷蘭阿姆斯特丹大學計算機係教授。