Assigned Reading 5 Data Compression

Data compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits then uncoded information.  This works when the sender and receiver understand the same scheme.  There are two types of compression:

1.  Loseless--this represents the senders data more concisely without error.  There is a possibility of statistical redundancy.  Can be reversed so original data is reconstructed.

2.  Lossy--there is an acceptable loss of data to increase the compression.  The stages in lossy are prediction, frequency, transformation and quantization.  JPEG (image compression) and audio compression are two examples of lossy.