HUFFMAN CODING Meaning and
Definition
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Huffman coding is a lossless data compression algorithm used to reduce the amount of storage space required to represent data. It is named after its creator, David A. Huffman, who introduced it in 1952. This coding technique assigns shorter codes to characters or symbols that occur more frequently in a given dataset, while longer codes are allotted to less frequently occurring symbols. By applying Huffman coding, data can be represented in the most efficient manner, thereby reducing the overall file size.
The algorithm utilizes a variable-length prefix coding system, where the code assigned to each character is not a prefix of any other code. This ensures that decoding can be performed without any ambiguity. Huffman coding follows a two-step process: constructing a Huffman tree and generating the prefix codes.
To construct the Huffman tree, the frequency of occurrence of each character is determined. The characters are then arranged into a binary tree structure based on these frequencies, with the most frequent characters placed nearer to the root of the tree. The prefix codes are generated by traversing the Huffman tree, with left branches representing 0 and right branches representing 1.
Huffman coding has found significant application in various domains, such as compressing text files, image files, and audio files. It provides an efficient method for reducing the file size while retaining the ability to reconstruct the original data accurately.
Common Misspellings for HUFFMAN CODING
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Etymology of HUFFMAN CODING
The term "Huffman coding" is named after its inventor, David A. Huffman. Huffman was a American computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He developed the Huffman coding algorithm during his Ph.D. studies at MIT in 1950. This algorithm is commonly used for data compression and is widely known as Huffman coding in honor of its creator.
