Newsgroups: comp.compression
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!sarah!bingnews!kym
From: kym@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (R. Kym Horsell)
Subject: Re: theoretical compression factor
Message-ID: <1991Apr4.230820.3941@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Organization: State University of New York at Binghamton
References: <46618@ut-emx.uucp> <5239@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> <VICTOR.91Apr4102353@irt.watson.ibm.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1991 23:08:20 GMT

In article <VICTOR.91Apr4102353@irt.watson.ibm.com> victor@watson.ibm.com writes:
>people thinking is from a paper of Ziv and Lempel:  Construct a
>sequence of bits as follows: first write down in order all 1 digit
>binary numbers (with leading zeroes if they are there), then all two
>digit, etc.  The surprising fact that they prove is that this sequence
>is incompressible by ANY finite-state compressor (of which Huffman, or
>arithmetic coders are good examples), but it is rather easy to see
>that an efficient way of transmitting this sequence is to send a
>program to generate it, along with the length of the sequence.

Hmmm, interesting.

I presume the same is true for all ``normal'' sequences over a given
alphabet?

-kym
