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> Suppose you have some strange coin - you've tossed it 10 times, and every time it lands on heads. How would you describe this information to someone? You woul
by jancsika 5y ago
> Suppose you have some strange coin - you've tossed it 10 times, and every time it lands on heads. How would you describe this information to someone? You wouldn't say HHHHHHHHH. You would just say "10 tosses, all heads" - bam! You've just compressed some data! Easy. I saved you hours of mindfuck lectures. This is obviously an oversimplification, but you've transformed some data into another shorter representation of the same information.
Future generations will disagree it's the "same information."
I predict there will be a small but vocal cabal who seize on your example with nine H's to argue that it's not the case.
On a more serious note, if you lose the decoder ring does it cease to be a "representation of the same information?"
- donkarma 5y agoIt's curious because where do you draw the line between an algorithm that compresses information and an algorithm that just stores the inforamtion in the algorithm.
- acchow 5y agoRight, you of course also need the decoder in order to reconstruct the data. In this case, the "decoder" is the english language.