Week 5 Reading Response

Wikipedia: Data Compression

Overall, this article does a pretty good job of explaining data compression, though they did lose me when the author(s) started listing off different methods with technical jargon about how they work. My biggest issue with this article was the first discussion of lossless compression. I understand what statistical redundancy is, and I see why the example of English text is useful, but the author doesn't go anywhere with it. How exactly does lossless compression use statistical redundancy?


Data Compression Basics

Finally, a technical article that is accessible to a layperson! The author really made this topic and the different methods of compression very understandable, and as someone who is not technologically savvy, I really appreciate that. My eyes did glaze over a bit when he was describe arithmetic coding. It was the only section I couldn't figure out what he was talking about, and in fact had to skip over it in order to be able to get to the rest of the article. However, this was just one small blip in an otherwise highly understandable article. I was even able to identify lossless versus lossy methods of compression before he told the reader what type it was by the end of the article!