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)
“It makes no sense to say what the objects of a theory are,
beyond saying how to interpret or reinterpret that theory in another.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.”
—Thomas Nagel (b. 1938)