It's a way to refine their models. A systematic model-based representation of data is basically also a generator of that data. Why is that? Blame Kolmogorov. T

It's a way to refine their models. A systematic model-based representation of data is basically also a generator of that data. Why is that? Blame Kolmogorov. There are deep connections between compression, serialization, and computation. An optimal compression scheme is a serialization and the Turing-complete program to decode it. For example: you can compress pi into a few lines of algorithm plus a starting constant like 4.