The Kolmogorov complexity of real numbers

  • Authors:
  • Ludwig Staiger

  • Affiliations:
  • Fachbereich Mathematik und Informatik, Institut für Informatik, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, von-Seckendorff-Platz 1, D-06120 Halle (Saale), Germany

  • Venue:
  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2002

Quantified Score

Hi-index 5.23

Visualization

Abstract

We consider for a real number α the Kolmogorov complexities of its expansions with respect to different bases. In the paper it is shown that, for usual and self-delimiting Kolmogorov complexity, the complexity of the prefixes of their expansions with respect to different bases r and b are related in a way that depends only on the relative information of one base with respect to the other.More precisely, we show that the complexity of the length l - logrb prefix of the base r expansion of α is the same (up to an additive constant) as the logrb-fold complexity of the length l prefix of the base b expansion of αThen we consider the classes of reals of maximum and minimum complexity. For maximally complex reals we use our result to derive a further complexity theoretic proof for the base independence of the randomness of real numbers.Finally, we consider Liouville numbers as a natural class of low complex real numbers.