On the Randomness of Compressed Data

It seems reasonable to expect from a good compression method that its output should not be further compressible, because it should behave essentially like random data. We investigate this premise for a variety of known lossless compression techniques, and find that, surprisingly, there is much varia...

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Main Authors: Shmuel T. Klein, Dana Shapira
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-04-01
Series:Information
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/11/4/196
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spelling doaj-08f460d445ba435b860a9ec1ed8f975f2020-11-25T02:26:48ZengMDPI AGInformation2078-24892020-04-011119619610.3390/info11040196On the Randomness of Compressed DataShmuel T. Klein0Dana Shapira1Computer Science Department, Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 5290002, IsraelComputer Science Department, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, IsraelIt seems reasonable to expect from a good compression method that its output should not be further compressible, because it should behave essentially like random data. We investigate this premise for a variety of known lossless compression techniques, and find that, surprisingly, there is much variability in the randomness, depending on the chosen method. Arithmetic coding seems to produce perfectly random output, whereas that of Huffman or Ziv-Lempel coding still contains many dependencies. In particular, the output of Huffman coding has already been proven to be random under certain conditions, and we present evidence here that arithmetic coding may produce an output that is identical to that of Huffman.https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/11/4/196data compressionHuffman codingarithmetic codingZiv-Lempel coding
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Shmuel T. Klein
Dana Shapira
spellingShingle Shmuel T. Klein
Dana Shapira
On the Randomness of Compressed Data
Information
data compression
Huffman coding
arithmetic coding
Ziv-Lempel coding
author_facet Shmuel T. Klein
Dana Shapira
author_sort Shmuel T. Klein
title On the Randomness of Compressed Data
title_short On the Randomness of Compressed Data
title_full On the Randomness of Compressed Data
title_fullStr On the Randomness of Compressed Data
title_full_unstemmed On the Randomness of Compressed Data
title_sort on the randomness of compressed data
publisher MDPI AG
series Information
issn 2078-2489
publishDate 2020-04-01
description It seems reasonable to expect from a good compression method that its output should not be further compressible, because it should behave essentially like random data. We investigate this premise for a variety of known lossless compression techniques, and find that, surprisingly, there is much variability in the randomness, depending on the chosen method. Arithmetic coding seems to produce perfectly random output, whereas that of Huffman or Ziv-Lempel coding still contains many dependencies. In particular, the output of Huffman coding has already been proven to be random under certain conditions, and we present evidence here that arithmetic coding may produce an output that is identical to that of Huffman.
topic data compression
Huffman coding
arithmetic coding
Ziv-Lempel coding
url https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/11/4/196
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