Robustness of Uniform Bayesian Encoding

In the decoding of received messages to transmitted messages, one of the usual assumptions is that the transmitted messages are sent with equal relative frequencies. In many practical situations this assumption is not valid. This paper is concerned with the investigation of the effects of removing the assumption of uniform input, on the optimum assignment of the received messages to a specific set of transmitted messages. The results show that if the deviation from uniformity is not too extreme, the optimum assignment will be one of the possible optimum assignments under the uniform input assumption. A measure of deviation from uniformity and a criterion for extreme deviation is included in the paper. © 1963 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.