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Geography of the Isle of Man

The Isle of Man is an island in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland in Northern Europe, with a population of almost 85,000. It is a British Crown dependency. It has a small islet, the Calf of Man, to its south. It is located at 54.25°N, -4.5°W.

Dimensions
Area:

Land: 571 km2

Water: 1 km2 (100 ha)

Total: 572 km2

This makes it:
 * slightly more than three times the size of Washington, D.C.
 * slightly more than one-third the size of Hertfordshire
 * slightly smaller than Saint Lucia.

Coast and territorial sea
The Isle of Man has a coastline of 160 km, and a territorial sea extending to a maximum of 12 nm from the coast, or the midpoint between it and other countries. The total territorial sea area is about 4000 km2 or 1500 sq miles, which is about 87% of the total area of the jurisdiction of the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man only holds exclusive fishing rights in the first 3 nm. The territorial sea is managed by the Isle of Man Government Department of Infrastructure.

The Raad ny Foillan long-distance footpath runs 153 km around the Manx coast.

Climate
The Isle of Man enjoys a temperate climate, with cool summers and mild winters. Average rainfall is high compared to the majority of the British Isles, due to its location to the western side of Great Britain and sufficient distance from Ireland for moisture to be accumulated by the prevailing south-westerly winds. Average rainfall is highest at Snaefell, where it is around 1900 mm a year. At lower levels, it can fall to around 800 mm a year.

Temperatures remain fairly cool, with the recorded maximum being 28.9 °C at Ronaldsway.

Terrain
The island's terrain is varied. There are two mountainous areas divided by a central valley which runs between Douglas and Peel. The highest point in the Isle of Man, Snaefell, is in the northern area and reaches 620 m above sea level. The northern end of the island is a flat plain, consisting of glacial tills and marine sediments. To the south, the island is more hilly, with distinct valleys. There is no land below sea level.

Land use

 * Arable land: 43.86%
 * Permanent crops: 0%
 * Other: 56.14% (includes permanent pastures, forests, mountain and heathland) (2011)

Natural hazards and environmental issues
There are few severe natural hazards, the most common being high winds, rough seas and dense fog. In recent years there has been a marked increase in the frequency of high winds, heavy rains, summer droughts and flooding both from heavy rain and from high seas. Snow fall has decreased significantly over the past century while temperatures are increasing year-round with rainfall decreasing.

Air pollution, marine pollution and waste disposal are issues in the Isle of Man.

Protected or recognised sites for nature conservation
In order of importance, international first, non-statutory last. Note that ASSIs and MNRs have equal levels of statutory protection under the Wildlife Act 1990.

UNESCO Biosphere Reserves

 * The entire territory of the Isle of Man, including all land, sea, freshwater, airspace and seabed is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve

Ramsar sites

Designated:
 * Ballaugh Curraghs UK21001 (2006, 193.4 ha). Has the same boundaries as the Ballaugh Curraghs ASSI.

Candidate:
 * The Ayres UK21002 (Proposed in 2004 & 2005, 600 ha)
 * Southern Coasts & Calf of Man UK21003 (Proposed in 2004 & 2005, 2326 ha)
 * Central Valley Curragh UK21004 (Proposed in 2004 & 2005, 164 ha)
 * Gob ny Rona, Maughold Head & Port Cornaa UK21005 (Proposed in 2004 & 2005, 209 ha)
 * Dalby Peatlands uk21006 (Proposed in 2004 & 2005, 58 ha)

Important Marine Mammal Areas
In 2024, the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force recognised that 17,610km2 of the central Irish Sea as being of global importance for marine mammals, known as the Central Irish Sea Important Marine Mammal Area. This includes about half of Manx marine territorial waters.

Important Bird Areas
The UK RSPB and UK JNCC have designated five areas of the Isle of Man which are of global significance to birdlife.

 * Isle of Man Sea Cliffs – 97 km of the east and west coasts
 * Calf of Man – 250 ha
 * The Ayres – c. 800ha
 * Ballaugh Curraghs – 374 ha
 * Isle of Man Hills – 8650 ha

National Nature Reserves

 * The Ayres (2000, 272 ha)

Areas of Special Scientific Importance
There are 25 ASSIs on the Isle of Man as of November 2022. One additional ASSI has been designated but later rescinded (Ramsey Estuary). Dates below refer to year of formal confirmation.

 * Ballachurry Meadows (2010, 11.9 ha)
 * Ballacrye Meadow (2005, 0.55 ha)
 * Ballateare Meadow (2014, 0.96 ha)
 * Ballaugh Curraghs (2005, 193.4 ha)
 * Central Ayres (1996, 259.66 ha, extended 2008 by 98.68 ha, total 358.35 ha)
 * Cronk y Bing (2006, 17.71 ha)
 * Cronk y King (2014, extended in 2021 to 3.02 ha)
 * Curragh Pharrick (2022, 4.02 ha)
 * Dalby Coast (2010, 62.1 ha)
 * Dhoon Glen (2007, 20.92 ha)
 * Douglas Head (2022)
 * Eary Vane (2007, 3.96 ha)
 * Glen Maye (2008, 15.92 ha)
 * Glen Rushen (2007, 12.27 ha)
 * Greeba Mountain & Central Hills (2009, 1,080.95 ha)
 * Grenaby Gareys (2021, 74.82 ha)
 * Jurby Airfield (2005, 63.04 ha)
 * Langness, Derbyhaven & Sandwick (2001, 310 ha)
 * Marine Drive (2021, 82.35 ha)
 * Maughold Cliffs & Brooghs (2011, 53.63 ha)
 * Port St Mary Ledges & Kallow Point (2011, 14.79 ha)
 * Poyll Vaaish Coast (2007, 44.76 ha)
 * Ramsey Estuary (designated but later rescinded in 2010; 15.8 ha)
 * Ramsey Mooragh Shore (2006, 2.65 ha)
 * Rosehill Quarry, Billown (2006, 1.37 ha)
 * Santon Gorge & Port Soldrick (2012, 24.35 ha)

Marine Nature Reserves
The Island's first marine nature reserve was designated in Ramsey Bay in October 2011. In 2018, nine further Marine Nature Reserves were given statutory protection. The ten Marine Nature Reserves around the Isle of Man cover over 10% of the country's territorial waters, in accordance with international requirements.
 * Ramsey Bay 2011
 * Baie ny Carrickey 2018
 * Calf and Wart Bank 2018
 * Douglas Bay 2018
 * Langness 2018
 * Laxey Bay 2018
 * Little Ness 2018
 * Niarbyl Bay 2018
 * Port Erin Bay 2018
 * West Coast 2018

Eelgrass Conservation Zones (Statutory – within MNRs)
Eelgrass Zostera marina is a legally protected species on the Isle of Man. Between 2011 and 2018, four strictly protected Eelgrass Conservation Zones have been designated to protect this important species.
 * Ramsey Bay MNR - Port Lewaigue & Ballure area (2011)
 * Baie ny Carrickey MNR - east of Gansey Point (2018)
 * Langness MNR - Fort Island Gully (2018)
 * Laxey Bay MNR - east of Gob ny Silvas (2018)

Eelgrass Voluntary Zones (Non-statutory – both in and outside MNRs)
In 2023, three existing statutory Eelgrass Conservation Zones were expanded on a voluntary basis (noting that, regardless of this 'voluntary' status, the species is still legally fully protected from reckless disturbance), with a further new site identified.
 * Ramsey Bay - a considerably larger area than the statutory zone (2023)
 * Langness - Derbyhaven Bay, northwest of Fort Island, separate from the Fort Island Gully statutory site (2023)
 * Laxey Bay - a considerably larger area than the statutory zone (2023)
 * Bulgham Bay - discovered in 2021, the only Eelgrass Voluntary Zone outside of an MNR (2023)

Areas of Special Protection

 * Ayres Gravel Pit designated 2001, 41 hectares. In 2019 this became a nature reserve managed by Manx BirdLife.

Bird Sanctuaries
Bird sanctuaries were formerly designated by that name under the Wild Birds Protection Act 1932. This designation was superseded by "Areas of Special Protection for Birds" under the Wildlife Act 1990; however, the following formerly designated Bird Sanctuaries remain protected:

 * Barnell Reservoir (Patrick) (1979) 0.02 km2
 * Tynwald National Park and Arboretum (1982)
 * Derbyhaven, Langness and Fort Island and foreshores adjoining (1936)
 * Renscault and Ballachrink (West Baldwin) (1978) 0.18 km2
 * The Willows (Ballamodha, Malew) (1984) 0.01 km2

Registered Heathland
Protected from unlicensed burning or destruction by the Heath Burning Act 2003.

 * Ballacowin (part DEFA, part private: Glen Ruy, Slieau Lhost Area)
 * Ballaugh Mountain (DEFA)
 * Beary Mountain (including the Twelve Shares; private, multiple owners)
 * Bienn y Phott (DEFA)
 * Bradda (part DEFA, part private)
 * Calf of Man (MNH)
 * Carraghyn (Private)
 * Central Hills ASSI (DEFA)
 * Creg ny Baa (part DEFA, part private Slieau Lhost and Slieau Meayl)
 * Cringle Great Park (DEFA)
 * Cronk ny Arrey Laa (DEFA)
 * Cross Vein, Watertrough Park and Glen Rushen (DEFA)
 * Dalby Mountain (Private, multiple owners)
 * Glen Auldyn (Private)
 * Greeba Mountain (DEFA)
 * Injebreck (Private)
 * Lanagore and Eary Cushlin (DEFA and MNH)
 * Maughold Mountain (DEFA)
 * Michael Hills (DEFA)
 * Mull (Meayll) Hill (Private)
 * Mullagh Ouyr (Private)
 * North Barrule (MUA)
 * Peel Hill (Private and Peel Commissioners)
 * Slieau Lhean (DEFA)
 * Slieau Lhost and Slieau Ree (DEFA)
 * Slieau Managh (DEFA)
 * Slieau Whallian (Private)
 * Snaefell (DEFA)
 * South Barrule (DEFA)
 * Surby (DEFA)
 * Chasms and Spanish Head (MNH)
 * The Rheast (DEFA)
 * Windy Common (DEFA)

Manx Wildlife Trust Reserves
Manx Wildlife Trust was founded on 6 March 1973 and (as of May 2023) manages 30 nature reserves, including the Calf of Man which is managed with and on behalf of Manx National Trust. These reserves total 535.13 ha, or around 1% of the Isle of Man and include:

Designated Wildlife Sites
The Isle of Man has (as of March 2023) 92 non-statutory 'Wildlife Sites' sites covering 1230.54 ha in addition to the 10.4 km of coastline. As of 30 January 2009 this total was 45 wildlife sites, covering about 195 ha of land and an additional 10.5 km of inter-tidal coast. Wildlife Sites are not recognised in law, but are recognised in terms of Government policy, including planning and zonation (by the Isle of Man Strategic Plan) and agricultural policy (under Cross Compliance regulations). Wildlife Sites are shown on the MANNGIS Island Environment map.

Other Nature Reserves

 * Ballalough Reedbeds: 1.4 ha managed by Castletown Commissioners
 * Ballanette and Clay Head Brooghs: nature reserve, private but open to the public
 * Snaefell Valley: nature reserve, private but open to the public
 * Manx BirdLife Ayres National Reserve

Manx National Trust Landholdings
The following properties are under the protection of Manx National Heritage. The Manx National Trust owns properties in 15 of the 17 Manx parishes (all except Jurby and Michael).

 * Andreas: Ballakeil, Kerroogarroo
 * Arbory: Ballayack, building at the Friary
 * Ballaugh: Ballaugh Curragh
 * Braddan: Marine Drive, Braddan Pinfold
 * Bride: The Ayres: Ballakesh, Ballawhannel
 * Lezayre: Vollan Fort, The Grove, Killabrega, Sulby Glen
 * Lonan: Ballacowle, Bulgham, Laxey Wheel, Gretch Veg, King Orry's Grave, Laxey Head, Cronk y Chule
 * Malew: Silverdale Glen, Hango Hill, St Michael's Isle, Rushen Abbey, Castle Rushen
 * Marown: Upper Ballaharry, The Braid
 * Maughold: Maughold Head, Maughold Brooghs, Gob ny Rona, Maughold Green, Baldromma, Port Lewaigue, Ballaterson, Dhoon, Port e Vullen
 * Onchan: Scollag Road
 * Patrick: Eary Cushily, Ennin Moar, Creggan Mooar, Peel Castle, Niarbyl, Doarlish Mooar, Knockuskey
 * Rushen: Cregneash, Chasms, Kitterland, Shenvalley, Meayll Hill, Sugarloaf, Calf of Man, Church Farm, Glen Chass, Rheast Mooar, Fistard, The Sound
 * Santon: The Broogh Fort

Geology
The majority of the island is formed from highly faulted and folded sedimentary rocks of the Ordovician period. There is a belt of younger Silurian rocks along the west coast between Niarbyl and Peel, and a small area of Devonian sandstones around Peel. A band of Carboniferous period rocks underlies part of the northern plain, but is nowhere seen at the surface; however similar age rocks do outcrop in the south between Castletown, Silverdale and Port St Mary. Permo- Triassic age rocks are known to lie beneath the Point of Ayre but, as with the rest of the northern plain, these rocks are concealed by substantial thicknesses of superficial deposits.

The island has significant deposits of copper, lead and silver, zinc, iron, and plumbago (a mix of graphite and clay). There are also quarries of black marble, limestone flags, clay schist, and granite. These are all modern, and there was no noticeable exploitation of metals or minerals before the modern era.

Demographics
The island has a census-estimated population of 84,497 according to the most recent 2011 census: up from 79,805 in 2006 and 76,315 in 2001.

The island's largest town and administrative centre is Douglas, whose population is 23,000 – over a quarter of the population of the island. Neighbouring Onchan, Ramsey in the north, Peel in the west and the three southern ports of Castletown, Port Erin and Port St Mary are the island's other main settlements. Almost all its population lives on or very near the coast.

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Demographics of the Isle of Man

Demographic features of the population of the Isle of Man include population density, ethnicity, level of education, health, economic status, and religious affiliations.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Demographics of the Isle of Man


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Politics of the Isle of Man

The government of the Isle of Man is a parliamentary representative democracy. The Monarch of the United Kingdom is also the head of state of the Isle of Man, and generally referred to as "The King, Lord of Mann". Legislation of the Isle of Man defines "the Crown in right of the Isle of Man" as separate from the "Crown in right of the United Kingdom". His representative on the island is the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man, but his role is mostly ceremonial, though he does have the power to grant Royal Assent (the withholding of which is the same as a veto).

The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, and the island has no representation in the UK parliament. As a Crown Dependency, it is not subordinate to the government of the United Kingdom. That government, however, is responsible for defence and island's external affairs and could intervene in the domestic affairs of the island under its residual responsibilities to guarantee "good government" in all Crown dependencies. Manx people are British citizens under UK law — there is no separate Manx citizenship.

The legislative power of the government is vested in a bicameral (sometimes called tricameral) parliament called Tynwald (said to be the world's oldest continuously existing parliament), which consists of the directly-elected House of Keys and the indirectly chosen Legislative Council. After every House of Keys general election, the members of Tynwald elect from amongst themselves the Chief Minister of the Isle of Man, who serves as the head of government for five years (until the next general election). Executive power is vested in the Lieutenant Governor (as Governor-in-Council), the Chief Minister, and the Isle of Man's Council of Ministers. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.

Douglas, the largest town on the Isle of Man, is its capital and seat of government, where the Government offices and the parliament chambers (Tynwald) are located.

Executive branch
The Head of State is the Lord of Mann, which is a hereditary position held by the British monarch (currently King Charles III). The Lieutenant Governor is appointed by the King, on the advice of the UK's Secretary of State for Justice, for a five-year term and nominally exercises executive power on behalf of the King. The Chief Minister is elected by the House of Keys (formerly by Tynwald) following every House of Keys general election and serves for five years until the next general election.

When acting as Lord of Mann, the King acts on the advice of the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom having prime responsibility as Privy Counsellor for Manx affairs.

The executive branch under the Chief Minister is referred to as "the Government" or the "Civil Service", and consists of the Council of Ministers, nine Departments, ten Statutory Boards and three Offices. Each Department is run by a Minister who reports directly to the Council of Ministers. The Civil Service has more than 2000 employees and the total number of public sector employees including the Civil Service, teachers, nurses, police, etc. is about 9000 people. This is somewhat more than 10% of the population of the island, and a full 23% of the working population. This does not include any military forces, as defence is the responsibility of the United Kingdom.

Legislative branch
The Manx legislature is Tynwald, which consists of two chambers or "branches". The House of Keys has 24 members, elected for a five-year term in two-seat constituencies by the whole island. The minimum voting age is 16. The Legislative Council has eleven members: the President of Tynwald, the Bishop of Sodor and Man, the Attorney General (non-voting) and eight other members elected by the House of Keys for a five-year term, with four retiring at a time. (In the past they have often already been Members of the House of Keys, but must leave the Keys if elected to the Council.) There are also joint sittings of the Tynwald Court (the two branches together).

Political parties and elections
In the 2021 Manx general election, the Manx Labour Party won two seats and the Liberal Vannin Party won one seat; all 21 remaining seats were won by independents.

Most Manx politicians stand for election as independents rather than as representatives of political parties. Though political parties do exist, their influence is not nearly as strong as in the United Kingdom. Consequently, much Manx legislation develops through consensus among the members of Tynwald, which contrasts with the much more adversarial nature of the British Parliament.

The largest political party is the Liberal Vannin Party, which promotes liberalism, greater Manx independence and more accountability in Government.

The Manx Labour Party is unaffiliated to the British Labour Party.

A political pressure group Mec Vannin advocates the establishment of a sovereign republic.

The Isle of Man Green Party, which was founded in 2016, holds two local government seats and promotes Green politics.

The island also formerly had a Manx National Party. There are Manx members in the Celtic League, a political pressure group that advocates greater co-operation between and political autonomy for the Celtic nations.

Intervention of the United Kingdom
The UK Parliament has paramount power to legislate for the Isle of Man on all matters, but it is a long-standing convention that it does not do so on domestic ("insular") matters without Tynwald's consent.

Occasionally, the UK Parliament acts against the wishes of Tynwald: the most recent example was the Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967, which banned pirate radio stations from operating in Manx waters. Legislation to accomplish this was defeated on its second reading in the House of Keys, prompting Westminster to legislate directly.

The UK's secondary legislation (regulations and statutory instruments) cannot be extended to apply to the Isle of Man.

The UK has had several disputes with the European Court of Human Rights about the Isle of Man's laws concerning birching (corporal punishment) in the case of Tyrer v. the United Kingdom, and sodomy.

Judicial branch
The lowest courts in the Isle of Man are presided over by the High Bailiff and the Deputy High Bailiff, along with lay Justices of the Peace. The High Court of Justice consists of three civil divisions and is presided over by a Deemster. Appeals are dealt with by the Staff of Government Division with final appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the United Kingdom. The head of the Judiciary is the First Deemster and Clerk of the Rolls. The other High and Appeal Court Judges are the Second Deemster, The Deemster and the Judge of Appeal, all of whom are appointed by the Lieutenant Governor.

The Court of General Gaol Delivery is the criminal court for serious offences (effectively the equivalent of a Crown Court in England). It is theoretically not part of the High Court, but is effectively the criminal division of the court. The Second Deemster normally sits as the judge in this court. In 1992, His Honour Deemster Callow passed the last sentence of death in a court in the British Islands (which was commuted to life imprisonment). Capital punishment in the Isle of Man was formally abolished by Tynwald in 1993 (although the last execution on the island took place in 1872).

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Economy of the Isle of Man

The economy of the Isle of Man is a low-tax economy with insurance, online gambling operators and developers, information and communications technology (ICT), and offshore banking forming key sectors of the island's economy.

As an offshore financial centre located in the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man is within the British Isles but does not form part of the United Kingdom and was never a part of the European Union.

As of 2016, the Crown dependency's gross national income (GNI) per capita was US$89,970 as assessed by the World Bank. The Isle of Man Government's own National Income Report shows the largest sectors of the economy are insurance and eGaming with 17% of GNI each, followed by ICT and banking with 9% each, with tourist accommodation in the lowest sector at 0.3%.

Economic performance
After 32 years of continued Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, the financial year 2015/16 showed the first drop in GDP, of 0.9%, triggered by decline in eGaming revenues.

The unemployment rate is around 5%.

Property prices are flat or declining, but recent figures also show an increase in resident income tax payers.

The government's policy of offering incentives to high-technology companies and financial institutions to locate on the island has expanded employment opportunities in high-income industries. Agriculture, fishing, and the hospitality industry, once the mainstays of the economy, now make declining contributions to the island's GNP. The hospitality sector contributed just of 0.3% of GNP in 2015/16, and 629 jobs in 2016. eGaming and ICT contribute the great bulk of GNP. The stability of the island's government and its openness for business make the Isle of Man an attractive alternative jurisdiction (DAW Index ranked 3).

Economic strategy
In the Vision2020 the Isle of Man government lays out the national strategy of economic growth, seeking an increase of the economically active population an promoting the Island as an 'Enterprise Island, ''Tech Isle', 'Manufacturing centre of excellence', 'Offshore energy hub', 'Destination Island' and for 'Distinctive local food and drink'. The government has published its national economic strategies for several emerging sectors: aerospace, biomed, digital media, ICT.

Tax rates
The Isle of Man is a low-tax economy with no capital gains tax, wealth tax, stamp duty, or inheritance tax; and a top rate of income tax of 20%. A tax cap is in force: the maximum amount of tax payable by an individual is £200,000; or £400,000 for couples if they choose to have their incomes jointly assessed. Personal income is assessed and taxed on a total worldwide income basis rather than on a remittance basis. This means that all income earned throughout the world is assessable for Manx tax, rather than only income earned in or brought into the Island.

The standard rate of corporation tax for residents and non-residents is 0%; retail business profits above £500,000 and banking business income are taxed at 10%, and rental (or other) income from land and buildings situated on the Isle of Man is taxed at 20%.

Trade
Trade is mostly with the United Kingdom. The Isle of Man has free access to European Union markets for goods, but only has restricted access for services, people, or financial products.

Tax transparency and the offshore banking debate
The Isle of Man as an offshore financial centre has been repeatedly featured in the press as a tax haven, most recently in the wake of the Paradise Papers.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes has rated the Isle of Man as 'top compliant' for a second time: a status which only three jurisdictions in the world have achieved so far. The island has become the second nation after Austria to ratify a multilateral convention with the OECD to implement measures to prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS).

In a report the European Council lists the Isle of Man together with the other two Crown Dependencies (Guernsey and Jersey) as well as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Vanuatu, as committed to addressing the Council's concerns of "Existence of tax regimes that facilitate offshore structures which attract profits without real economic activity" by 2018.

Sectors
The Isle of Man's Department for Enterprise manages the diversified economy in twelve key sectors. The largest individual sectors by GNI are insurance and eGaming with 17% of GNI each, followed by ICT and banking with 9% each. The 2016 census lists 41,636 total employed. The largest sectors by employment are "medical and health", "financial and business services", construction, retail and public administration. Manufacturing, focused on aerospace and the food and drink industry, employs almost 2000 workers and contributes about 5% of GDP. The sector provides laser optics, industrial diamonds, electronics, plastics and aerospace precision engineering.

Finance sector
Insurance, banking (includes retail banking, offshore banking and other banking services), other finance and business services, and corporate service providers together contribute the most to the GNI and most of the jobs, with 10,057 people employed in 2016.

eGaming & ICT
Among the largest employers of the Island's private sector are eGaming (online gambling) companies like The Stars Group, Microgaming, Newfield, and Playtech. The Manx eGaming Association MEGA is representing the sector. Licenses are issued by the Gambling Supervision Commission.

In 2005 PokerStars, one of the world's largest online poker sites, relocated its headquarters to the Isle of Man from Costa Rica. In 2006, RNG Gaming a large gaming software developer of P2P tournaments and Get21, a multiplayer online blackjack site, based their corporate offices on the island.

The Isle of Man Government Lottery operated from 1986 to 1997. Since 2 December 1999 the island has participated in the United Kingdom National Lottery. The island is the only jurisdiction outside the United Kingdom where it is possible to play the UK National Lottery. Since 2010 it has also been possible for projects in the Isle of Man to receive national lottery Good Causes Funding. The good causes funding is distributed by the Manx Lottery Trust. Tynwald receives the 12p lottery duty for tickets sold in the Island.

The shortage of workers with ICT skills is tackled by several initiatives, like an IT and education campus, a new cyber security degree at the University College of Man, a Code Club, and a work permit waiver for skilled immigrants.

Filmmaking and digital media
Since 1995 Isle of Man Film has co-financed and co-produced over 100 feature film and television dramas which have all filmed on the Island.

Among the most successful productions funded in part by Isle of Man Film agency were Waking Ned, where the Manx countryside stood in for rural Ireland, and films like Stormbreaker, Shergar, Tom Brown's Schooldays, I Capture the Castle, The Libertine, Island at War (TV series), Five Children and It, Colour Me Kubrick, Sparkle, and others. Other films that have been filmed on the Isle of Man include Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Keeping Mum and Mindhorn.

2011 Isle of Man Film Oxford Economics was commissioned by Isle of Man Film Ltd to conduct a study into the economic impact of the film industry on the Isle of. Man. The recommendation of this report for Isle of Man Film was to partner with a more established film institution in the UK to source more Isle of Man film production opportunities. This led to the investment of the Isle of Man Government to take shares in Pinewood Shepperton Plc which were sold later with profit.

Once one of the busiest areas of film production in the British Isles, the Isle of Man hopes to use its strong foundation in film to grow its television and new digital media industry. In a recent Isle of Man Department of Economic Development strategic review, the Island's over 2,000 jobs counting digital sector features 'digital media' and the creative industries, and embraces partnerships with the industry and its individual sector bodies like the Isle of Media, a new media cluster.

Motorsports
Hosting of motorsports events, like the Isle of Man Car Rally and the more-prominent TT motorcycle races, contributes to the tourism economy.

Tourism
Tourism in the Isle of Man developed from advances in transport to the island. In 1819 the first steamship Robert Bruce came to the island, only seven years after the first steam vessel in the UK. In the 1820s, tourism was growing due to improved transport. The island government's own report for the financial years 2014/15-2015/16 shows tourist accommodation to be in the lowest sector at 0.3%, ranking slightly above 'mining and quarrying' (0.1%).

Electricity
Since 1999, the Isle of Man has received electricity through the world's second longest submarine AC cable, the 90 kV Isle of Man to England Interconnector, as well as from a natural gas power station in Douglas, an oil power station in Peel and a small hydro-electric power station in Sulby Glen.

Gas
Gas for lighting and heating has been supplied to users on the Isle of Man since 1836, firstly as town gas, then as liquid petroleum gas (LPG); since 2003 natural gas has been available. The future use of hydrogen as a supplementary or substitute fuel is being studied.

Broadband
The Island is connected with five submarine cables to the UK and Ireland.

While the Isle of Man Communications Commission refers to Akamai’s recent State of the Internet Report for Q1 2017, with "the Island ranked 8th in the world for percentage of broadband connections with >4 Mb/s connectivity, with 96% of users connecting at speeds greater than 4 Mb/s", an "international league table of broadband speeds puts the Isle of Man at 50th in the world". Manx Telecom recently announced to roll out Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) superfast broadband with download speeds of up to 1Gigabit per second.

Travel links
Ronaldsway Airport links the Isle of Man with six airlines to eleven UK and Irish scheduled flight destinations.

The Steam Packet Company provides ferry services to Liverpool, Heysham, Belfast and Dublin.

Statistics
Labour force—by occupation: agriculture, forestry and fishing 3%, manufacturing 11%, construction 10%, transport and communication 8%, wholesale and retail distribution 11%, professional and scientific services 18%, public administration 6%, banking and finance 18%, tourism 2%, entertainment and catering 3%, miscellaneous services 10%

Unemployment rate: nominally 5.0% (July 2020)

Industries: financial services, light manufacturing, tourism

Agriculture—products: cereals, vegetables, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry

Exports: $NA

Exports—commodities: tweeds, herring, processed shellfish, beef, lamb

Exports—partners: UK

Imports: $NA

Imports—commodities: timber, fertilizers, fish

Imports—partners: UK

Debt—external: $NA

Economic aid—recipient: $NA

Currency: 1 Isle of Man pound = 100 pence

Exchange rates: the Manx pound is at par with the British pound

Fiscal year: 1 April – 31 March

title: Economy of the Isle of Man


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Communications in the Isle of Man

The Isle of Man has an extensive communications infrastructure consisting of telephone cables, submarine cables, and an array of television and mobile phone transmitters and towers.

Telegraph
The history of Manx telecommunications starts in 1859, when the Isle of Man Electric Telegraph Company was formed on the island with the intention of connecting across the island by telegraph, and allowing messages to be sent onwards to the UK. In August 1859, a 36 nmi long cable was commissioned from Glass, Elliot and Company of Greenwich and laid from Cranstal (north of Ramsey) to St Bees in Cumbria using the chartered cable ship Resolute. The cable was single-core, with gutta-percha insulation.

Twenty miles of overhead cable were also erected from Cranstal south to Ramsey, and on to Douglas. In England, the telegraph was connected to Whitehaven and the circuits of the Electric Telegraph Company.

The telegraph offices were located at 64 Athol Street, Douglas (also the company's head office) and at East Quay, Ramsey (now Marina House).

On 10 August 1860 the company was statutorily incorporated by an Act of Tynwald with a capital of £5,500.

The currents at Cranstal proved too strong, and in 1864 the cable was taken up and relaid further south, at Port-e-Vullen in Ramsey Bay. It was later relaid to land even further south at Port Cornaa.

Following the 1869 finalisation of UK telegraph nationalisation into a General Post Office monopoly, the Isle of Man Electric Telegraph Company was nationalised in 1870 under the Telegraph Act 1870 (an Act of Parliament) at a cost to the British Government of £16,106 (paid in 1872 following arbitration proceedings over the value). Prior to nationalisation, the island's telegraph operations had been performing poorly and the company's share price valued it at around £100.

Subsequent to nationalisation, operations were taken over by the GPO. The internal telegraph system was extended within a year to Castletown and Peel, however by then the previous lack of modern communications in Castletown had already started the Isle of Man Government on its move to Douglas.

Due to increasing usage in the years following nationalisation, further cables between Port Cornaa and St Bees were laid in 1875 and 1885.

By 1883 Smith's Directory listed several telegraph offices operated by the Post Office, in addition to those at Douglas, Ramsey, Castletown and Peel the telegraph was also available at Laxey, Ballaugh, and Port St. Mary.

Throughout the First World War, the cable landing station at Port Cornaa was guarded by the Isle of Man Volunteer Corps.

The undersea telegraph cables have been disused since the 1950s, but remain in place.

Teleport
A Teleport, with several earth stations, is currently under construction on the Isle of Man. SES Satellite Leasing, the entrepreneurial investment arm of SES. The teleport is expected to enter into service in 2017. It will be a state-of-the-art facility providing satellite telemetry, tracking and commanding (TT&C) facilities and capacity management, together with a wide range of teleport services such as uplink, downlink, and contribution services for broadcasters and data centres.

Telephones
The main telephone provider on the Isle of Man today is Manx Telecom.

In 1889 George Gillmore, formerly an electrician for the GPO's Manx telegraph operations, was granted a licence by the Postmaster General to operate the Isle of Man's first telephone service. Based in an exchange in Athol Street, early customers of Gilbert's telephone service included the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company and the Isle of Man Railway. Not having the resources to fund expansion or a link to England, Gillmore sold his licence to the National Telephone Company and stayed on as their manager on the island.

By 1901 there were 600 subscribers, and the telephone system had been extended to Ramsey, Castletown, Peel, Port Erin, Port St. Mary and Onchan.

On 1 January 1912 the National Telephone Company was nationalised and merged into the General Post Office by the Telephone Transfer Act 1911. Only Guernsey, Portsmouth and Hull remained outside of the GPO.

In 1922, the General Post Office offered to sell the island's telephone service to the Manx government, but the offer was not taken up. A similar arrangement in Jersey for that island's telephone service was concluded in 1923.

The first off-island telephone link was established in 1929, with the laying of a cable by the CS Faraday between Port Erin and Ballyhornan in Northern Ireland, a distance of 57 km, and then between Port Grenaugh and Blackpool, primarily to provide a link to Northern Ireland. The cable was completed on 6 June 1929 and the first call between the Isle of Man and the outside world was made on 28 June 1929 by Lieutenant Governor Sir Claude Hill in Douglas to the Postmaster General in Liverpool. The cable initially carried only two trunk circuits.

In 1942, a pioneering VHF frequency-modulated radio-link was established between Creg-na-Baa and the UK to provide an alternative to the sub-sea cable. This has since been discontinued.

This was augmented on 24 June 1943 by a 74 km long cable between Cemaes Bay in Anglesey and Port Erin, which had the world's first submerged repeater, laid by HMCS Iris. The repeater doubled the possible number of circuits on the cable, and although it failed after only five months, its replacement worked for seven years.

In 1962 a further undersea cable was laid by HMTS Ariel between Colwyn Bay and the Island.

Historically, the telephone system on the Isle of Man had been run as a monopoly by the British General Post Office, and later British Telecommunications, and operated as part of the Liverpool telephone district.

By 1985 the privatised British Telecom had inherited the telephone operations of the GPO, including those on the Isle of Man. At this time the Manx Government announced that it would award a 20-year licence to operate the telephone system in a tender process. As part of this process, in 1986 British Telecom created a Manx-registered subsidiary company, Manx Telecom, to bid for the tender. It was believed that a local identity and management would be more politically acceptable in the tendering process as they competed with Cable & Wireless to win the licence. Manx Telecom won the tender, and commenced operations under the new identity from 1 January 1987.

On 28 March 1988 an 8,000 telephone circuit fibre optic cable, the longest unregenerated system in Europe, was inaugurated. It links Port Grenaugh to Silecroft in Cumbria, and was laid in September 1987. The cable was buried in the seabed along its entire length.

A further fibre optic cable, known as BT-MT1 was laid in October 1990 between Millom in Cumbria and Douglas, a distance of 43 nmi. Jointly operated by BT and Manx Telecom, it provides six channels each with a bandwidth of 140 Mbit/s. This cable remains in use today.

In July 1992, Mercury Communications laid the LANIS fibre-optic cables. LANIS-1 runs for 61 nmi between Port Grenaugh and Blackpool, and LANIS-2 runs for 36 nmi between the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. They have six channels each with a bandwidth of 565 Mbit/s. The LANIS cables are now operated by Cable & Wireless. The LANIS-1 cable was damaged 600 m off Port Grenaugh on 27 November 2006, causing loss of the link and resulting in temporary Internet access issues for some Manx customers whilst it was awaiting repair.

On 17 November 2001 Manx Telecom became part of mmO2 following the demerger of BT Wireless's operations from BT Group, and the company was owned by Telefónica. On 4 June 2010 Manx Telecom was sold by Telefónica to UK private equity investor HgCapital (who were buying the majority stake), alongside telecoms management company CPS Partners

In December 2007, the Manx Electricity Authority and its telecoms subsidiary, e-llan Communications, commissioned the lighting of a new undersea fibre-optic link. It was laid in 1999 between Blackpool and Douglas as part of the Isle of Man to England Interconnector which connects the Manx electricity system to the UK's National Grid.

In December 2017, Horizon Electronics Isle of Man (formerly Horizon Electro) helped with the online TV services of the Isle of Man.

According to the CIA World Factbook, in 1999 there were 51,000 fixed telephone lines in use in the Isle of Man.

The Isle of Man is included within the UK telephone numbering system, and is accessed externally via UK area codes, rather than by its own country calling code. The area codes currently in use are: +44 1624 (landlines) and +44 7425 / +44 7624 / +44 7924 (mobiles).

Submarine communications cables in service

 * BT-MT1 (BT/Manx Telecom, 1990 - UK)
 * BT-MT1-NI (BT/Manx Telecom, 2000 - Northern Ireland (UK))
 * LANIS-1 (Cable & Wireless, 1992 - UK)
 * LANIS-2 (Cable & Wireless, 1992 - Northern Ireland (UK))
 * Isle of Man to England Interconnector (Manx Electricity Authority, 2007 - UK)
 * Aqua Comms Isle of Man Link to Ireland and the USA
 * Aqua Comms Isle of Man Link to Blackpool UK

Submarine cables in Manx waters are governed by the Submarine Cables Act 2003 (an Act of Tynwald).

Telecoms service providers

 * Manx Telecom The incumbent provider offering all types of telecoms and owner of the national network.
 * Sure The islands second full service provider offering all types of telecommunications from: Mobiles, Broadband, Home Phone, Private Circuits, Dedicated Internet Access, Data Centre Hosting, LAN/WAN/PABX consultancy etc.
 * Wi-Manx VoIP and internet services provider since 2007. In 2014 Wi-Manx were granted a Full Telecoms Operator license.
 * Netcetera Offers hosting and co-location in its Ballasalla data centre.
 * BlueWave Communications A provider of ISP and 4G services to business and consumers. BlueWave Communications is a communications service provider located in Douglas on the Isle of Man who were granted their Full Telecoms Operator licence in 2018 . It was founded in 2007  by Stuart Baggs and provides communications services to both businesses and consumers on the Isle of Man.

Mobile telephones
The mobile phone network operated by Manx Telecom has been used by O2 as an environment for developing and testing new products and services prior to wider rollout. In December 2001, the company became the first telecommunications operator in Europe to launch a live 3G network. In November 2005, the company became the first in Europe to offer its customers an HSDPA (3.5G) service.

Sure built their own mobile network on the island in 2007 and following various upgrades now deliver 2G/3G and 4G services

Internet
In 1996 the Isle of Man government obtained permission to use the .im national top level domain (TLD) and has ultimate responsibility for its use. The domain is managed on a daily basis by Domicilium (IOM) Limited, an island based Internet service provider. Broadband Internet services are available through five local providers which are Manx Telecom, Sure, Wi-Manx , Domicilium , Opti-Fi Limited and BlueWave Communications.

In 2021 it was revealed Bluewave host a Ground station for the Starlink Satellite Internet system

Radio
The public-service commercial radio station for the island is Manx Radio. Manx Radio is part funded by government grant, and partly by advertising. There are two other Manx-based FM radio stations, Energy FM and 3 FM.

BBC national radio stations are also relayed locally via a transmitter located to the south of Douglas, relayed from Sandale transmitting station in Cumbria, as well as a signal feed from the Holme Moss transmitting station in West Yorkshire. The Douglas transmitter also broadcasts the BBC's DAB digital radio services and Classic FM.

Manx Radio is the only local service to broadcast on AM medium wave. No UK services are relayed via local AM transmitters. No longwave stations operate from the Island, although one (MusicMann 279) was proposed. There are currently no proposals to broadcast any of the three insular FM stations on DAB.

Transmitters

 * Snaefell - Manx Radio, Energy FM, 3FM
 * Foxdale - Manx Radio (AM)
 * Mull Hill (near Port St. Mary) - Energy FM, 3FM
 * Jurby - Energy FM, Manx Radio,
 * Ramsey - Manx Radio, Energy FM, 3FM, Horizon Pulse, (a nearby site also used for television broadcasts the BBC DAB multiplex)
 * Ballasaig (Maughold) - Energy FM
 * Carnane (Douglas) - Manx Radio, Energy FM, 3FM, Horizon Pulse, Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, Classic FM, BBC DAB multiplex
 * Port St Mary - 3FM, BBC DAB multiplex
 * Beary Peark - Energy FM, 3FM
 * Peel - Manx Radio
 * Cronk ny Arrey - 3FM

Television
There is no island-specific television service. Local transmitters retransmit UK Freeview broadcasts. The BBC region is BBC North West and the ITV region is Granada Television.

Many television services are available by satellite, such as Sky, and Freesat from the Astra 2/Eurobird 1 group, as well as services from a range of other satellites around Europe such as Astra 1 and Hot Bird.

Manx ViaSat-IOM, ManSat, Telesat-IOM companies uses the first communications satellite ViaSat-1 that launched in 2011 and positioned at the Isle of Man registered 115.1 degrees West longitude geostationary orbit point. In some areas, terrestrial television directly from the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland can also be received.

Analogue television transmission ceased between 2008 and 2009, when limited local transmission of digital terrestrial television commenced. The UK's television licence regime extends to the island.

There is no island-specific opt-out of the BBC regional news programme North West Tonight, in the way that the Channel Islands get their own version of Spotlight.

Television was first received on the Isle of Man from the Holme Moss transmitter which started broadcasting BBC Television (later BBC One) from 12 October 1951. Signals from Holme Moss were easily received on the Isle of Man.

ITV television has been available on parts of the east of the Isle of Man on 3 May 1956 when Granada Television (and ABC Television from 5 May 1956 to 28 July 1968) transmissions started from the Winter Hill transmitting station, and to parts of the west of the island on 31 October 1959 from the Black Mountain transmitting station in Northern Ireland which broadcasts Ulster Television. Parts of the north of the island received Border Television since 1 September 1961, initially directly from the Caldbeck transmitting station in Cumberland (later became Cumbria from 1974). On 26 March 1965, Border Television commenced relay of their signal through a local transmitter on Richmond Hill, 542 ft above sea level and 3 mi from the centre of Douglas. The site allowed reliable reception of the Caldbeck signal, which is rebroadcast on a different frequency. The 200 ft high transmission tower was re-sited from London, where it had been used for early ITV transmissions. Richmond Hill was decommissioned after the close of 405-line broadcasts, although the 200 ft tower remained in use for radio with Manx Radio transmitting on 96.9 MHz and then 97.3 MHz until 1989. Manx Radio moved their FM service to the Carnane site and the frequency changed to the current 97.2 MHz.

The television broadcasts are now transmitted from a 195 ft high transmitter on a hill to the south of Douglas. The transmitter is operated by Arqiva and is directly fed using a fibre optic cable. There are further sub-relay transmitters across the island. Following a realignment of ITV regional services and the digital switchover, the Douglas relay switched ITV broadcasts to Granada Television on Thursday 17 July 2009.

The Broadcasting Act 1993 (An Act of Tynwald) allows for the establishment of local television services. Only one application for a licence to run such a service was received by the Communications Commission. That application was rejected.

According to the CIA World Factbook, in 1999 there were 27,490 televisions in use in the Isle of Man.

Transmitters

 * Kimmeragh (Bride)
 * Beary Peark (St Johns)
 * Glen Maye
 * Foxdale
 * Port St. Mary
 * Carnane (Douglas)
 * Union Mills
 * Laxey
 * Jurby
 * Ramsey

Post
Isle of Man Post issues its own stamps for use within the island and for sending post off-island. Only Manx stamps are valid for sending mail using the postal system. The Isle of Man adopted postcodes in 1993 using the prefix IM to fit in with the already established UK postcode system.

title: Communications in the Isle of Man


text:
Transport in the Isle of Man

There are a number of transport services around the Isle of Man, mostly consisting of paved roads, public transport, rail services, sea ports and an airport.

Roads

The island has a total of 688 mi of public roads, all of which are paved. Roads are numbered using a numbering scheme similar to the numbering schemes of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; each road is assigned a letter, which represents the road's category, followed by a 1 or 2 digit number. A roads are the main roads of the island whilst roads labelled B, C, D or U decrease in size and/or quality. (The C, D and U numbers are not marked on most maps or on signposts.) There is no national speed limit – some roads may be driven at any speed which is safe and appropriate. Careless and dangerous driving laws still apply, so one may not drive at absolutely any speed, and there are local speed limits on many roads. Many unrestricted roads have frequent bends which even the most experienced driver cannot see round. Drivers are limited to 50 mph in the first full year after passing their driving test (Isle of Man citizens are permitted to start driving at the age of sixteen) and some are not used to having to make progress in the same way as on a larger road network such as that in the UK: even a cautious driver can get from anywhere in the island to anywhere else in no more than sixty minutes.

Set against this is a strong culture of motor sport enthusiasm (pinnacled in the TT, but there are many events during the year) and many residents familiar with the roads are well used to traversing country roads at speeds illegal on similar roads elsewhere. This leads to a very diverse spread of both driving competence and speed. In an official survey in 2006 the introduction of blanket speed limits was refused by the population, suggesting that a large number appreciate the freedom.

There is a comprehensive bus network, operated by Bus Vannin, a department of the Isle of Man Government, with most routes originating or terminating in Douglas.

An organisation on the Isle of Man called the Fare Free Campaign supports making bus and tram travel on the island free of charge for all routes. One of the reasons the campaign gives for supporting this is to encourage people to change their transportation habits to help mitigate climate change.

Railways
The island has a total of 68.5 km of railway. There are seven separate public rail or tram systems on the island:

a Reopened 2022, on a shortened route with its western terminus at Broadway.

(The last three are short-distance tourist rides which cannot be said to be transport services.)

All of these routes are seasonal.

Airports
The only commercial airport on the island is the Isle of Man Airport at Ronaldsway. Scheduled services operate to and from various cities in the United Kingdom and Ireland, operated by several different airlines.

The island's other paved runways are at Jurby and Andreas. Jurby remains in Isle of Man Government ownership and is used for motorsport events and, previously, airshows, while Andreas is privately owned and used by a local glider club. The old Hall Caine Airport, a grass field near Ramsey, is no longer used.

Aircraft Register
The Isle of Man Aircraft Register became operational on 1 May 2007. The register is open to all non-commercial aircraft and is intended to be of particular interest to professionally flown corporate operators. As of November 2012 a total of 537 corporate and private aircraft had been registered.

Ports and harbours
There are ports at Castletown, Douglas, Peel, Port St Mary and Ramsey. Douglas is served by frequent ferries to/from England and occasional ferries to/from Ireland; the sole operator is the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, with exclusive use of the Isle of Man Sea Terminal and the Douglas port linkspans under the conditions of the user agreement with the Isle of Man Government.

Merchant marine
The Isle of Man register comprised 404 merchant ships of 1,000 GT or over at the end of 2017.

title: Transport in the Isle of Man


text:
Talk:Isle of Man

Fairies
Is the reference to "Mi'raj" someone's idea of a joke? Aside from its similarity to "mirage", the mi'raj is an Arab mythical creature. I can't find any reference to it being Manx, aside from this article. --Bibliosporias (talk) 12:27, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Name, meaning of
Re the Name section – does it actually state what the name means? Ellan Vannin = ”Island of Mann”, but what is ”Mann”? ”Man” perhaps..? Hexmaster.se (talk) 11:10, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Um, did you read the section? It is most likely derived from a word for 'mountain', but is at least legendarily also associated with the mythological figure Manannán mac Lir. And we say that pretty clearly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:38, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Man vs. Mann
sometimes I see Mann in this article and other times Man, I know both are "right" according to the TOP of the article, but which should consistently be applied across the article in copy? Iljhgtn (talk) 02:02, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

 * Then also I see manx, which is the demonym i understand, but that is fine. Man, Mann is all i need clarification on. Iljhgtn (talk) 02:03, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * It's "Mann" by itself, or "Isle of Man", but not "Man" by itself nor "Isle of Mann". And "Manx" is the adjectival form.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:48, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * i will comb over the article and see if there are any inconsistencies from the convention you outlined then. Iljhgtn (talk) 10:27, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * There's also Manx Gaelic Mannin, lenited as Vannin, e.g. in Ellan Vannin.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:54, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * cool thanks. also you may want to comment on my question over at Douglas, Isle of Man. I believe it is a city now, and the article should be updated then. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Flag discrepancy
I noticed a discrepancy between the Manx flag included within the Wikipedia article and Manx flags elsewhere, such as Britannica and in real-world images. The image on Wikipedia has a gold five-pointed star connected directly to the heel of each boot on the Triskelion. However, in other cases, the five-pointed star is replaced with a twelve pointed star connected somewhat more distantly from the heel of each boot by a support, and in some cases the star is not gold, nor is the support if it is there. I was just wondering if this was an issue with Wikipedia, or if the triskelion's definition is vague to begin with.

Examples of a few variants I found are linked below.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Isle_of_Man#/media/File:Flag_of_the_Isle_of_Mann.svg

Wikipedia, real world example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Loch_Promenade_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1354.jpg (Notice how the stars from Wikipedia are clearly not visible)

Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/flag-of-the-Isle-of-Man

Flag Institute (UK company): https://www.flaginstitute.org/wp/flags/isle-of-man-flag/

crwflags: https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/im.html

Manx Wildlife Trust (via Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/ManxWildlifeTrust/photos/a.753661324673851/6319861794720415/?type=3 Cytrusss (talk) 20:56, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Confusion about the island
Hey! Let me tell you with peace: This is not supposed to be an offense or “any word” that describes “going against Isle of Man’s geography”, but …

1) I understand that Isle of Man is part of the British Crown!

2) Isle of Man is not known as its own sovereign state.

3) The island name can also be written as “Isle of Mann” OR for short “Mann”.

4) If Isle of Man’s nationality is “British” and not any other demonym (such as Irish), then it does not make sense for any website on internet (including Wikipedia) to say “The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom”. I mean if that island doesn’t belong to any country in the world other than United Kingdom, then Isle of Man must be part of United Kingdom itself and the same thing could include “Guernsey” and “Jersey” themself, IF their passports say “British” on the inside too, in my mind.

Finally: What would only make sense to me is if the statement about the island rather said “The Isle of Man is not part of United Kingdom’s mainland”! 🙂 I hope you can understand that. Craig Lungren (talk) 06:34, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

 * You may find more details on the status of the Isle of Man at Crown Dependencies. CMD (talk) 06:49, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

 * I will say Thanks for that info 👍 but after reading a good amount of that link, that still includes the “Not Making Sense” part that I’m getting at. I could even be commenting the same information that I sent in this talk page to that link involving its own talk page, being as those so-called “more details” is still written within Wikipedia. However, once I copied and pasted my previous information into that other talk page, I could definitely add the newer details (from “Crown Dependencies”) that also does not make any sense to me either and send them all together.
 * Anyways, My Point Is:
 * Every land of the world is either “a continent” or “an island”!
 * Every island (including some locations of a continent) that is not known as its own country (or sovereign state), is obviously “a territory”.
 * Every territory would be claimed by one of the 193 known countries, regardless of them having an inhabited or uninhabited population.
 * Regardless of the country that has its claim over whatever territory it is, the result of that is “The territory belongs to that specific country”.
 * Whatever country it is that every territory belongs to, that just means “The territory itself is part of that specific country”.

In this case, Isle of Man is “an island” and “a territory”. Its nationality is “British”, and that means “United Kingdom claims its sovereignty over that said island, located in between the UK’s mainland and the island of Ireland. The “Isle of Man” therefore “belongs to United Kingdom” and as that island belongs to the UK, it is in other words “An island-territory that’s part of United Kingdom”. 👍 I’m not denying that.

(Ps. This only makes sense because it is not  its own country or sovereign state , nor  claimed by  or  belonging to  any other known country, besides being part of the “British Crown” and “Crown Dependencies”)! 🙂 Thanks for reading all of this.
 * Craig Lungren (talk) 08:27, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Manannán's Isle is an alternate name for the Isle of Man
Manannán mac Lir is a sea deity in Irish mythology often associated with the Isle of Man, where he is said to have ruled as a protective king, enveloping the island in mist to shield it from invaders. The name reflects the island's deep-rooted cultural and mythological heritage, intertwining its historical identity with the legends of Manannán. The Isle of Man itself, located in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland, has a distinct cultural identity and history, with Manannán's legacy being a significant part of its folklore.

One of the strongest sources that support the connection between Manannán mac Lir and the Isle of Man, and his role in its mythology, would be "The Folklore of the Isle of Man" by A.W. Moore, published in 1891. This work delves into the rich folklore and traditions of the Isle of Man, including its mythological associations with Manannán mac Lir. Moore's comprehensive study provides historical and cultural contexts that illustrate the significance of Manannán in Manx folklore, making it a valuable resource for understanding the mythological heritage of the Isle of Man. See: archive.org/details/folkloreofisleof00moor

Also, the "Dictionary of Celtic Mythology" by James MacKillop (1998) ISBN = 0198804849 offers an authoritative overview of Celtic mythology, including entries on Manannán mac Lir and his connections to the Isle of Man. MacKillop's work is widely recognized for its scholarly accuracy and detailed entries, making it another strong citation for information on Manannán and the Isle of Man's mythological background. sbelknap

Also, "A Mighty Fleet and the King’s Power: the Isle of Man, AD 400 to 1265" (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2023) ISBN: 9781910900802 (talk) 01:22, 3 April 2024 (UTC) sbelknap (talk) 01:35, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Isle of Man


text:
Information theory

Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was established and put on a firm footing by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, however, early contributions were made in the 1920s through the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley. It is at the intersection of electronic engineering, mathematics, statistics, computer science, neurobiology, physics, and electrical engineering.

A key measure in information theory is entropy. Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process. For example, identifying the outcome of a fair coin flip (with two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy, less uncertainty) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a die (with six equally likely outcomes). Some other important measures in information theory are mutual information, channel capacity, error exponents, and relative entropy. Important sub-fields of information theory include source coding, algorithmic complexity theory, algorithmic information theory and information-theoretic security.

Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include source coding/data compression (e.g. for ZIP files), and channel coding/error detection and correction (e.g. for DSL). Its impact has been crucial to the success of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention of the compact disc, the feasibility of mobile phones and the development of the Internet. The theory has found applications in other areas, including statistical inference, cryptography, neurobiology, perception, linguistics, the evolution and function of molecular codes (bioinformatics), thermal physics, molecular dynamics, quantum computing, black holes, information retrieval, intelligence gathering, plagiarism detection, pattern recognition, anomaly detection, imaging system design, epistemology, and even art creation.

Overview
Information theory studies the transmission, processing, extraction, and utilization of information. Abstractly, information can be thought of as the resolution of uncertainty. In the case of communication of information over a noisy channel, this abstract concept was formalized in 1948 by Claude Shannon in a paper entitled A Mathematical Theory of Communication, in which information is thought of as a set of possible messages, and the goal is to send these messages over a noisy channel, and to have the receiver reconstruct the message with low probability of error, in spite of the channel noise. Shannon's main result, the noisy-channel coding theorem, showed that, in the limit of many channel uses, the rate of information that is asymptotically achievable is equal to the channel capacity, a quantity dependent merely on the statistics of the channel over which the messages are sent.

Coding theory is concerned with finding explicit methods, called codes, for increasing the efficiency and reducing the error rate of data communication over noisy channels to near the channel capacity. These codes can be roughly subdivided into data compression (source coding) and error-correction (channel coding) techniques. In the latter case, it took many years to find the methods Shannon's work proved were possible.

A third class of information theory codes are cryptographic algorithms (both codes and ciphers). Concepts, methods and results from coding theory and information theory are widely used in cryptography and cryptanalysis, such as the unit ban.

Historical background
The landmark event establishing the discipline of information theory and bringing it to immediate worldwide attention was the publication of Claude E. Shannon's classic paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in the Bell System Technical Journal in July and October 1948. He came to be known as the "father of information theory".

Prior to this paper, limited information-theoretic ideas had been developed at Bell Labs, all implicitly assuming events of equal probability. Harry Nyquist's 1924 paper, Certain Factors Affecting Telegraph Speed, contains a theoretical section quantifying "intelligence" and the "line speed" at which it can be transmitted by a communication system, giving the relation $W = K log m$ (recalling the Boltzmann constant), where W is the speed of transmission of intelligence, m is the number of different voltage levels to choose from at each time step, and K is a constant. Ralph Hartley's 1928 paper, Transmission of Information, uses the word information as a measurable quantity, reflecting the receiver's ability to distinguish one sequence of symbols from any other, thus quantifying information as $H = log S^{n} = n log S$, where S was the number of possible symbols, and n the number of symbols in a transmission. The unit of information was therefore the decimal digit, which since has sometimes been called the hartley in his honor as a unit or scale or measure of information. Alan Turing in 1940 used similar ideas as part of the statistical analysis of the breaking of the German second world war Enigma ciphers.

Much of the mathematics behind information theory with events of different probabilities were developed for the field of thermodynamics by Ludwig Boltzmann and J. Willard Gibbs. Connections between information-theoretic entropy and thermodynamic entropy, including the important contributions by Rolf Landauer in the 1960s, are explored in Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory.

In Shannon's revolutionary and groundbreaking paper, the work for which had been substantially completed at Bell Labs by the end of 1944, Shannon for the first time introduced the qualitative and quantitative model of communication as a statistical process underlying information theory, opening with the assertion:
 * "The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point, either exactly or approximately, a message selected at another point."

With it came the ideas of
 * the information entropy and redundancy of a source, and its relevance through the source coding theorem;
 * the mutual information, and the channel capacity of a noisy channel, including the promise of perfect loss-free communication given by the noisy-channel coding theorem;
 * the practical result of the Shannon–Hartley law for the channel capacity of a Gaussian channel; as well as
 * the bit—a new way of seeing the most fundamental unit of information.

Quantities of information
Information theory is based on probability theory and statistics, where quantified information is usually described in terms of bits. Information theory often concerns itself with measures of information of the distributions associated with random variables. One of the most important measures is called entropy, which forms the building block of many other measures. Entropy allows quantification of measure of information in a single random variable. Another useful concept is mutual information defined on two random variables, which describes the measure of information in common between those variables, which can be used to describe their correlation. The former quantity is a property of the probability distribution of a random variable and gives a limit on the rate at which data generated by independent samples with the given distribution can be reliably compressed. The latter is a property of the joint distribution of two random variables, and is the maximum rate of reliable communication across a noisy channel in the limit of long block lengths, when the channel statistics are determined by the joint distribution.

The choice of logarithmic base in the following formulae determines the unit of information entropy that is used. A common unit of information is the bit, based on the binary logarithm. Other units include the nat, which is based on the natural logarithm, and the decimal digit, which is based on the common logarithm.

In what follows, an expression of the form $p log p$ is considered by convention to be equal to zero whenever $p = 0$. This is justified because $$\lim_{p \rightarrow 0+} p \log p = 0$$ for any logarithmic base.

Entropy of an information source
Based on the probability mass function of each source symbol to be communicated, the Shannon entropy $H$, in units of bits (per symbol), is given by
 * $$H = - \sum_{i} p_i \log_2 (p_i)$$

where $p_{i}$ is the probability of occurrence of the $i$-th possible value of the source symbol. This equation gives the entropy in the units of "bits" (per symbol) because it uses a logarithm of base 2, and this base-2 measure of entropy has sometimes been called the shannon in his honor. Entropy is also commonly computed using the natural logarithm (base $e$, where $e$ is Euler's number), which produces a measurement of entropy in nats per symbol and sometimes simplifies the analysis by avoiding the need to include extra constants in the formulas. Other bases are also possible, but less commonly used. For example, a logarithm of base 28 = 256 will produce a measurement in bytes per symbol, and a logarithm of base 10 will produce a measurement in decimal digits (or hartleys) per symbol.

Intuitively, the entropy $H_{X}$ of a discrete random variable $X$ is a measure of the amount of uncertainty associated with the value of $X$ when only its distribution is known.

The entropy of a source that emits a sequence of $N$ symbols that are independent and identically distributed (iid) is $N ⋅ H$ bits (per message of $N$ symbols). If the source data symbols are identically distributed but not independent, the entropy of a message of length $N$ will be less than $N ⋅ H$.

If one transmits 1000 bits (0s and 1s), and the value of each of these bits is known to the receiver (has a specific value with certainty) ahead of transmission, it is clear that no information is transmitted. If, however, each bit is independently equally likely to be 0 or 1, 1000 shannons of information (more often called bits) have been transmitted. Between these two extremes, information can be quantified as follows. If $$\mathbb{X}$$ is the set of all messages $H_{b}(p)$ that $\{x_{1}, ..., x_{n}\}$ could be, and $X$ is the probability of some $$x \in \mathbb X$$, then the entropy, $p(x)$, of $H$ is defined:

 * $$ H(X) = \mathbb{E}_{X} [I(x)] = -\sum_{x \in \mathbb{X}} p(x) \log p(x).$$

(Here, $X$ is the self-information, which is the entropy contribution of an individual message, and $$\mathbb{E}_X$$ is the expected value.) A property of entropy is that it is maximized when all the messages in the message space are equiprobable $I(x)$; i.e., most unpredictable, in which case $p(x) = 1/n$.

The special case of information entropy for a random variable with two outcomes is the binary entropy function, usually taken to the logarithmic base 2, thus having the shannon (Sh) as unit:

 * $$H_{\mathrm{b}}(p) = - p \log_2 p - (1-p)\log_2 (1-p).$$

Joint entropy
The of two discrete random variables $H(X) = log n$ and $X$ is merely the entropy of their pairing: $Y$. This implies that if $(X, Y)$ and $X$ are independent, then their joint entropy is the sum of their individual entropies.

For example, if $Y$ represents the position of a chess piece—$(X, Y)$ the row and $X$ the column, then the joint entropy of the row of the piece and the column of the piece will be the entropy of the position of the piece.

 * $$H(X, Y) = \mathbb{E}_{X,Y} [-\log p(x,y)] = - \sum_{x, y} p(x, y) \log p(x, y) \,$$

Despite similar notation, joint entropy should not be confused with.

Conditional entropy (equivocation)
The or conditional uncertainty of $Y$ given random variable $X$ (also called the equivocation of $Y$ about $X$) is the average conditional entropy over $Y$:

 * $$ H(X|Y) = \mathbb E_Y [H(X|y)] = -\sum_{y \in Y} p(y) \sum_{x \in X} p(x|y) \log p(x|y) = -\sum_{x,y} p(x,y) \log p(x|y).$$

Because entropy can be conditioned on a random variable or on that random variable being a certain value, care should be taken not to confuse these two definitions of conditional entropy, the former of which is in more common use. A basic property of this form of conditional entropy is that:

 * $$ H(X|Y) = H(X,Y) - H(Y) .\,$$

Mutual information (transinformation)
Mutual information measures the amount of information that can be obtained about one random variable by observing another. It is important in communication where it can be used to maximize the amount of information shared between sent and received signals. The mutual information of $Y$ relative to $X$ is given by:

 * $$I(X;Y) = \mathbb{E}_{X,Y} [SI(x,y)] = \sum_{x,y} p(x,y) \log \frac{p(x,y)}{p(x)\, p(y)}$$

where $Y$ (Specific mutual Information) is the pointwise mutual information.

A basic property of the mutual information is that
 * $$I(X;Y) = H(X) - H(X|Y).\,$$

That is, knowing Y, we can save an average of $SI$ bits in encoding X compared to not knowing Y.

Mutual information is symmetric:
 * $$I(X;Y) = I(Y;X) = H(X) + H(Y) - H(X,Y).\,$$

Mutual information can be expressed as the average Kullback–Leibler divergence (information gain) between the posterior probability distribution of X given the value of Y and the prior distribution on X:
 * $$I(X;Y) = \mathbb E_{p(y)} [D_{\mathrm{KL}}( p(X|Y=y) \| p(X) )].$$

In other words, this is a measure of how much, on the average, the probability distribution on X will change if we are given the value of Y. This is often recalculated as the divergence from the product of the marginal distributions to the actual joint distribution:
 * $$I(X; Y) = D_{\mathrm{KL}}(p(X,Y) \| p(X)p(Y)).$$

Mutual information is closely related to the log-likelihood ratio test in the context of contingency tables and the multinomial distribution and to Pearson's χ2 test: mutual information can be considered a statistic for assessing independence between a pair of variables, and has a well-specified asymptotic distribution.

Kullback–Leibler divergence (information gain)
The Kullback–Leibler divergence (or information divergence, information gain, or relative entropy) is a way of comparing two distributions: a "true" probability distribution $p(X)$, and an arbitrary probability distribution $q(X)$. If we compress data in a manner that assumes $q(X)$ is the distribution underlying some data, when, in reality, $p(X)$ is the correct distribution, the Kullback–Leibler divergence is the number of average additional bits per datum necessary for compression. It is thus defined

 * $$D_{\mathrm{KL}}(p(X) \| q(X)) = \sum_{x \in X} -p(x) \log {q(x)} \, - \, \sum_{x \in X} -p(x) \log {p(x)} = \sum_{x \in X} p(x) \log \frac{p(x)}{q(x)}.$$

Although it is sometimes used as a 'distance metric', KL divergence is not a true metric since it is not symmetric and does not satisfy the triangle inequality (making it a semi-quasimetric).

Another interpretation of the KL divergence is the "unnecessary surprise" introduced by a prior from the truth: suppose a number X is about to be drawn randomly from a discrete set with probability distribution $p(x)$. If Alice knows the true distribution $p(x)$, while Bob believes (has a prior) that the distribution is $q(x)$, then Bob will be more surprised than Alice, on average, upon seeing the value of X. The KL divergence is the (objective) expected value of Bob's (subjective) surprisal minus Alice's surprisal, measured in bits if the log is in base 2. In this way, the extent to which Bob's prior is "wrong" can be quantified in terms of how "unnecessarily surprised" it is expected to make him.

Directed Information
Directed information, $$I(X^n\to Y^n) $$, is an information theory measure that quantifies the information flow from the random process $$X^n = \{X_1,X_2,\dots,X_n\}$$ to the random process $$Y^n = \{Y_1,Y_2,\dots,Y_n\}$$. The term directed information was coined by James Massey and is defined as
 * $$I(X^n\to Y^n) \triangleq \sum_{i=1}^n I(X^i;Y_i|Y^{i-1})$$,

where $$I(X^{i};Y_i|Y^{i-1})$$ is the conditional mutual information $$I(X_1,X_2,...,X_{i};Y_i|Y_1,Y_2,...,Y_{i-1})$$.

In contrast to mutual information, directed information is not symmetric. The $$I(X^n\to Y^n) $$ measures the information bits that are transmitted causally[definition of causal transmission?] from $$X^n$$ to $$Y^n$$. The Directed information has many applications in problems where causality plays an important role such as capacity of channel with feedback, capacity of discrete memoryless networks with feedback, gambling with causal side information, compression with causal side information, and in real-time control communication settings, statistical physics.

Other quantities
Other important information theoretic quantities include the Rényi entropy and the Tsallis entropy (generalizations of the concept of entropy), differential entropy (a generalization of quantities of information to continuous distributions), and the conditional mutual information. Also, pragmatic information has been proposed as a measure of how much information has been used in making a decision.

Coding theory

Coding theory is one of the most important and direct applications of information theory. It can be subdivided into source coding theory and channel coding theory. Using a statistical description for data, information theory quantifies the number of bits needed to describe the data, which is the information entropy of the source.

 * Data compression (source coding): There are two formulations for the compression problem:
 * lossless data compression: the data must be reconstructed exactly;
 * lossy data compression: allocates bits needed to reconstruct the data, within a specified fidelity level measured by a distortion function. This subset of information theory is called rate–distortion theory.
 * Error-correcting codes (channel coding): While data compression removes as much redundancy as possible, an error-correcting code adds just the right kind of redundancy (i.e., error correction) needed to transmit the data efficiently and faithfully across a noisy channel.

This division of coding theory into compression and transmission is justified by the information transmission theorems, or source–channel separation theorems that justify the use of bits as the universal currency for information in many contexts. However, these theorems only hold in the situation where one transmitting user wishes to communicate to one receiving user. In scenarios with more than one transmitter (the multiple-access channel), more than one receiver (the broadcast channel) or intermediary "helpers" (the relay channel), or more general networks, compression followed by transmission may no longer be optimal.

Source theory
Any process that generates successive messages can be considered a of information. A memoryless source is one in which each message is an independent identically distributed random variable, whereas the properties of ergodicity and stationarity impose less restrictive constraints. All such sources are stochastic. These terms are well studied in their own right outside information theory.

Rate
Information rate is the average entropy per symbol. For memoryless sources, this is merely the entropy of each symbol, while, in the case of a stationary stochastic process, it is

 * $$r = \lim_{n \to \infty} H(X_n|X_{n-1},X_{n-2},X_{n-3}, \ldots);$$

that is, the conditional entropy of a symbol given all the previous symbols generated. For the more general case of a process that is not necessarily stationary, the average rate is

 * $$r = \lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{1}{n} H(X_1, X_2, \dots X_n);$$

that is, the limit of the joint entropy per symbol. For stationary sources, these two expressions give the same result.

Information rate is defined as
 * $$r = \lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{1}{n} I(X_1, X_2, \dots X_n;Y_1,Y_2, \dots Y_n);$$

It is common in information theory to speak of the "rate" or "entropy" of a language. This is appropriate, for example, when the source of information is English prose. The rate of a source of information is related to its redundancy and how well it can be compressed, the subject of.

Channel capacity
Communications over a channel is the primary motivation of information theory. However, channels often fail to produce exact reconstruction of a signal; noise, periods of silence, and other forms of signal corruption often degrade quality.

Consider the communications process over a discrete channel. A simple model of the process is shown below:

Here X represents the space of messages transmitted, and Y the space of messages received during a unit time over our channel. Let $I(X; Y)$ be the conditional probability distribution function of Y given X. We will consider $p(y$ to be an inherent fixed property of our communications channel (representing the nature of the noise of our channel). Then the joint distribution of X and Y is completely determined by our channel and by our choice of $p(y$, the marginal distribution of messages we choose to send over the channel. Under these constraints, we would like to maximize the rate of information, or the signal, we can communicate over the channel. The appropriate measure for this is the mutual information, and this maximum mutual information is called the and is given by:
 * $$ C = \max_{f} I(X;Y).\! $$

This capacity has the following property related to communicating at information rate R (where R is usually bits per symbol). For any information rate R < C and coding error ε > 0, for large enough N, there exists a code of length N and rate ≥ R and a decoding algorithm, such that the maximal probability of block error is ≤ ε; that is, it is always possible to transmit with arbitrarily small block error. In addition, for any rate R > C, it is impossible to transmit with arbitrarily small block error.

Channel coding is concerned with finding such nearly optimal codes that can be used to transmit data over a noisy channel with a small coding error at a rate near the channel capacity.

Capacity of particular channel models

 * A continuous-time analog communications channel subject to Gaussian noise—see Shannon–Hartley theorem.
 * A binary symmetric channel (BSC) with crossover probability p is a binary input, binary output channel that flips the input bit with probability p. The BSC has a capacity of $f(x)$ bits per channel use, where $1 − H_{b}(p)$ is the binary entropy function to the base-2 logarithm:

 * [[File:Binary symmetric channel.svg]]

 * A binary erasure channel (BEC) with erasure probability p is a binary input, ternary output channel. The possible channel outputs are 0, 1, and a third symbol 'e' called an erasure. The erasure represents complete loss of information about an input bit. The capacity of the BEC is 1 − p bits per channel use.

 * [[File:Binary erasure channel.svg]]

Channels with memory and directed information
In practice many channels have memory. Namely, at time $$ i $$ the channel is given by the conditional probability$$ P(y_i|x_i,x_{i-1},x_{i-2},...,x_1,y_{i-1},y_{i-2},...,y_1). $$. It is often more comfortable to use the notation $$ x^i=(x_i,x_{i-1},x_{i-2},...,x_1) $$ and the channel become $$ P(y_i|x^i,y^{i-1}). $$. In such a case the capacity is given by the mutual information rate when there is no feedback available and the Directed information rate in the case that either there is feedback or not (if there is no feedback the directed information equals the mutual information).

Intelligence uses and secrecy applications
Information theoretic concepts apply to cryptography and cryptanalysis. Turing's information unit, the ban, was used in the Ultra project, breaking the German Enigma machine code and hastening the end of World War II in Europe. Shannon himself defined an important concept now called the unicity distance. Based on the redundancy of the plaintext, it attempts to give a minimum amount of ciphertext necessary to ensure unique decipherability.

Information theory leads us to believe it is much more difficult to keep secrets than it might first appear. A brute force attack can break systems based on asymmetric key algorithms or on most commonly used methods of symmetric key algorithms (sometimes called secret key algorithms), such as block ciphers. The security of all such methods comes from the assumption that no known attack can break them in a practical amount of time.

Information theoretic security refers to methods such as the one-time pad that are not vulnerable to such brute force attacks. In such cases, the positive conditional mutual information between the plaintext and ciphertext (conditioned on the key) can ensure proper transmission, while the unconditional mutual information between the plaintext and ciphertext remains zero, resulting in absolutely secure communications. In other words, an eavesdropper would not be able to improve his or her guess of the plaintext by gaining knowledge of the ciphertext but not of the key. However, as in any other cryptographic system, care must be used to correctly apply even information-theoretically secure methods; the Venona project was able to crack the one-time pads of the Soviet Union due to their improper reuse of key material.

Pseudorandom number generation
Pseudorandom number generators are widely available in computer language libraries and application programs. They are, almost universally, unsuited to cryptographic use as they do not evade the deterministic nature of modern computer equipment and software. A class of improved random number generators is termed cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators, but even they require random seeds external to the software to work as intended. These can be obtained via extractors, if done carefully. The measure of sufficient randomness in extractors is min-entropy, a value related to Shannon entropy through Rényi entropy; Rényi entropy is also used in evaluating randomness in cryptographic systems. Although related, the distinctions among these measures mean that a random variable with high Shannon entropy is not necessarily satisfactory for use in an extractor and so for cryptography uses.

Seismic exploration
One early commercial application of information theory was in the field of seismic oil exploration. Work in this field made it possible to strip off and separate the unwanted noise from the desired seismic signal. Information theory and digital signal processing offer a major improvement of resolution and image clarity over previous analog methods.

Semiotics
Semioticians Doede Nauta and Winfried Nöth both considered Charles Sanders Peirce as having created a theory of information in his works on semiotics. Nauta defined semiotic information theory as the study of "the internal processes of coding, filtering, and information processing."

Concepts from information theory such as redundancy and code control have been used by semioticians such as Umberto Eco and Ferruccio Rossi-Landi to explain ideology as a form of message transmission whereby a dominant social class emits its message by using signs that exhibit a high degree of redundancy such that only one message is decoded among a selection of competing ones.

Integrated process organization of neural information
Quantitative information theoretic methods have been applied in cognitive science to analyze the integrated process organization of neural information in the context of the binding problem in cognitive neuroscience. In this context, either an information-theoretical measure, such as (Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi's functional clustering model and dynamic core hypothesis (DCH) ) or  (Tononi's integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness   ), is defined (on the basis of a reentrant process organization, i.e. the synchronization of neurophysiological activity between groups of neuronal populations), or the measure of the minimization of free energy on the basis of statistical methods (Karl J. Friston's free energy principle (FEP), an information-theoretical measure which states that every adaptive change in a self-organized system leads to a minimization of free energy, and the Bayesian brain hypothesis     ).

Miscellaneous applications
Information theory also has applications in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, black holes, bioinformatics, and gambling.

Applications

 * Active networking
 * Cryptanalysis
 * Cryptography
 * Cybernetics
 * Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory
 * Gambling
 * Intelligence (information gathering)
 * Seismic exploration

History

 * Hartley, R.V.L.
 * History of information theory
 * Shannon, C.E.
 * Timeline of information theory
 * Yockey, H.P.
 * Andrey Kolmogorov

Theory

 * Coding theory
 * Detection theory
 * Estimation theory
 * Fisher information
 * Information algebra
 * Information asymmetry
 * Information field theory
 * Information geometry
 * Information theory and measure theory
 * Kolmogorov complexity
 * List of unsolved problems in information theory
 * Logic of information
 * Network coding
 * Philosophy of information
 * Quantum information science
 * Source coding

Concepts

 * Ban (unit)
 * Channel capacity
 * Communication channel
 * Communication source
 * Conditional entropy
 * Covert channel
 * Data compression
 * Decoder
 * Differential entropy
 * Fungible information
 * Information fluctuation complexity
 * Information entropy
 * Joint entropy
 * Kullback–Leibler divergence
 * Mutual information
 * Pointwise mutual information (PMI)
 * Receiver (information theory)
 * Redundancy
 * Rényi entropy
 * Self-information
 * Unicity distance
 * Variety
 * Hamming distance
 * Perplexity

The classic work
Notes and other formats.
 * Shannon, C.E. (1948), "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", Bell System Technical Journal, 27, pp. 379–423 & 623–656, July & October, 1948. PDF.
 * R.V.L. Hartley, "Transmission of Information", Bell System Technical Journal, July 1928
 * Andrey Kolmogorov (1968), "Three approaches to the quantitative definition of information" in International Journal of Computer Mathematics, 2, pp. 157–168.

Other journal articles

 * J. L. Kelly Jr., Princeton, "A New Interpretation of Information Rate" Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 35, July 1956, pp. 917–26.
 * R. Landauer, IEEE.org, "Information is Physical" Proc. Workshop on Physics and Computation PhysComp'92 (IEEE Comp. Sci.Press, Los Alamitos, 1993) pp. 1–4.

Textbooks on information theory

 * Alajaji, F. and Chen, P.N. An Introduction to Single-User Information Theory. Singapore: Springer, 2018. ISBN 978-981-10-8000-5
 * Arndt, C. Information Measures, Information and its Description in Science and Engineering (Springer Series: Signals and Communication Technology), 2004, ISBN 978-3-540-40855-0
 * Ash, RB. Information Theory. New York: Interscience, 1965. ISBN 0-470-03445-9. New York: Dover 1990. ISBN 0-486-66521-6
 * Gallager, R. Information Theory and Reliable Communication. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968. ISBN 0-471-29048-3
 * Goldman, S. Information Theory. New York: Prentice Hall, 1953. New York: Dover 1968 ISBN 0-486-62209-6, 2005 ISBN 0-486-44271-3
 * Csiszar, I, Korner, J. Information Theory: Coding Theorems for Discrete Memoryless Systems Akademiai Kiado: 2nd edition, 1997. ISBN 963-05-7440-3
 * MacKay, David J. C. Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-64298-1
 * Mansuripur, M. Introduction to Information Theory. New York: Prentice Hall, 1987. ISBN 0-13-484668-0
 * McEliece, R. The Theory of Information and Coding. Cambridge, 2002. ISBN 978-0521831857
 * Pierce, JR. "An introduction to information theory: symbols, signals and noise".  Dover (2nd Edition). 1961 (reprinted by Dover 1980).
 * Reza, F. An Introduction to Information Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill 1961. New York: Dover 1994. ISBN 0-486-68210-2
 * Stone, JV. Chapter 1 of book "Information Theory: A Tutorial Introduction", University of Sheffield, England, 2014. ISBN 978-0956372857.
 * Yeung, RW. A First Course in Information Theory Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002.  ISBN 0-306-46791-7.
 * Yeung, RW. Information Theory and Network Coding Springer 2008, 2002.  ISBN 978-0-387-79233-0
 * Yeung, RW. A First Course in Information Theory Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002.  ISBN 0-306-46791-7.
 * Yeung, RW. Information Theory and Network Coding Springer 2008, 2002.  ISBN 978-0-387-79233-0

Other books

 * Leon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, [1956, 1962] 2004. ISBN 0-486-43918-6
 * James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, New York: Pantheon, 2011. ISBN 978-0-375-42372-7
 * A. I. Khinchin, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory, New York: Dover, 1957. ISBN 0-486-60434-9
 * H. S. Leff and A. F. Rex, Editors, Maxwell's Demon: Entropy, Information, Computing, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey (1990). ISBN 0-691-08727-X
 * Robert K. Logan. What is Information? - Propagating Organization in the Biosphere, the Symbolosphere, the Technosphere and the Econosphere, Toronto: DEMO Publishing.
 * Tom Siegfried, The Bit and the Pendulum, Wiley, 2000. ISBN 0-471-32174-5
 * Charles Seife, Decoding the Universe, Viking, 2006. ISBN 0-670-03441-X
 * Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1982, ISBN 0-671-44062-4
 * Henri Theil, Economics and Information Theory, Rand McNally & Company - Chicago, 1967.
 * Escolano, Suau, Bonev, Information Theory in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Springer, 2009. ISBN 978-1-84882-296-2
 * Vlatko Vedral, Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information, Oxford University Press 2010. ISBN 0-19-923769-7

title: Information theory