Theory
The theoretical background of compression is provided by information theory (which is closely related to algorithmic information theory) for lossless compression, and by rate–distortion theory for lossy compression. These fields of study were essentially created by Claude Shannon, who published fundamental papers on the topic in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Coding theory is also related. The idea of data compression is deeply connected with statistical inference.
Read more about this topic: Data Compression
Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“The weakness of the man who, when his theory works out into a flagrant contradiction of the facts, concludes “So much the worse for the facts: let them be altered,” instead of “So much the worse for my theory.””
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“[Anarchism] is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)