3 ms·
The word "bit" is a portmanteau word for Binary digIT
- sohn 14y agoSo
- quorn3000 14y agoIt's a contraction. Yes, I've read the wikipedia definition of portmanteau, and I still think bit isn't a portmanteau. Obligatory http://xkcd.com/739/ http://xkcd.com/739/
- DanBC 14y agoVaguely disturbing that this is new to anyone on HN. Queue discussion of nibbles and bytes. The paper is well worth reading if you haven't already done so. A Mathematical Theory of Communication (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pd...) Especially page 5, which is a very easy to understand description of EDIT markov chains. But you can use that letter frequency thing to do a really nice easy description of compression.