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Doesn't that description basically presuppose that you already understand compression? "HHHHHHHHHH" is 10 characters, but "10 tosses, all heads" is 21. Already
by delusional 5y ago
Doesn't that description basically presuppose that you already understand compression? "HHHHHHHHHH" is 10 characters, but "10 tosses, all heads" is 21. Already understanding compression, I of course know that the second part could be efficient if encoded properly, but someone actually needing the explanation probably wouldn't know that.
It's not really wrong, and not really an "oversimplification" as the parent article calls it. It's just a bad example, and it seems confused about the audience it's trying to reach. Either they already understand compression, and it's superfluous, or they don't and it's just confusing.
- bool3max 5y agoThat was an example, intended for humans. It is much quicker to say "10 tosses, all heads", than it is to say "HHHHHHHHHH". A computer example might explain that it takes less storage to store "10H" (i.e. the integer 10 followed by the character H), than it is to store 10 H characters in a sequence.