4 ms·

Wouldn't any compression algorithm be a silly example when using such a small amount of data as the overheard to communicate information about the compression w

Wouldn't any compression algorithm be a silly example when using such a small amount of data as the overheard to communicate information about the compression would take more data than was saved and potentially more data than the original message? I think it still suffices as an example because it would be easy to infer how this scales up to an entire book. Finer details are left out, but is that the sort of detail that should be present in a very short introductory article?

utopcell 6y ago
Not communicating enough info to rebuild the tree is a separate issue, but it is mentioned in the article so the reader is not left guessing. In the example however, we have a set of 6 symbols that would require 3 bits each to represent uncompressed but instead assume 8 bits. It invites fairness questions, which would distract a reader that has not been exposed to the concept before. This is an otherwise nice intro to the topic though.