Abstract

One of the main challenges that we face both as individual persons and as a species concerns the distribution and use of resources, such as water, time, capital, computing power or negatively valued
resources like nuclear waste. Also within theoretical physics, one
frequently deals with resources like free energy or quantum entanglement. I will describe a mathematical theory of resources which makes quantitative predictions about how many resources are required for
producing a certain commodity and outline some applications to information theory.
Joint work with Bob Coecke and Rob Spekkens.