4 ms·
The Weissman score is the most moronic compression "metric" ever devised. I put "metric" in quotes because from a mathematical perspective, it is practically g
by dietrichepp 10y ago
The Weissman score is the most moronic compression "metric" ever devised. I put "metric" in quotes because from a mathematical perspective, it is practically gibberish. I'm tired of seeing it mentioned in every HN post on compression.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- indolering 10y agoSilicon Valley gets rave reviews, but a story plot based on a patented compression algorithm....
- legodt 10y agoI also see this kind of response a lot in situations the score is brought up. I don't have a background in compression, what is the current method for measuring compression efficiency? Is it a balance between size reduction and speed to unpack or is measuring compression efficacy far more nuanced?
- dietrichepp 10y agoUsually you compare on a 2D graph, with one axis being decompression speed and the other axis being compression ratio. Sometimes decompression speed is replaced by decompression + compression speed, for round-trip data. Very rarely you only consider compression speed, for "write-many read-seldom" data (like backups). Normally, any sensible 1D metric would be visualized as isolines in that 2D plane. But the "Weissman score" doesn't even make that much sense, it's a discontinuous, non-monotonic function with singularities right in the middle! It doesn't even make sense from a dimensional analysis perspective… the score will fluctuate wildly based on the units you choose for time and size (minutes? seconds? octets? bits?). There is no conceivable real-world application of the Weissman score. It is just a bit of bad math that appeared on TV once.