We survey the diverse approaches to the notion of information content: from
Shannon entropy to Kolmogorov complexity. The main applications of Kolmogorov
complexity are presented namely, the mathematical notion of randomness (which
goes back to the 60's with the work of Martin-Lof, Schnorr, Chaitin, Levin),
and classification, which is a recent idea with provocative implementation by
Vitanyi and Cilibrasi.Comment: 37 page
