For the debate, half of the people will be defending the use of arithmetic coding and the rest universal coding based on Lempel-Ziv coding. The point is to argue about the use of the methods from pragmatic point of view, i.e., why in practice one should prefer one method over the other. The debate will be structured as follows:
1) The defending groups will select among themselves people to give a brief 10 minute introduction (2-3 transparencies) to the method in question.
2) Both parties will present a list (5 items or more) of reasons why their method is better than the competing one.
3) A discussion will be intiated and hopefully lively continued.
The group assignments are as follows, and will not be changed without strong supporting argumentation:Team Lempel-Ziv:
Team Arithmetic coding:
Good starting points as reading material for the debate can be found in
»
MacKay's draft, Chapter 6
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Lempel-Ziv in: Loben Chiang's thesis draft
»
data-compression.com: Lossless Data Compression
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Steve Blackstock: LZW and GIF explained
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Arturo San Emeterio Campos: Arithmetic coding
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Mark Nelson: Arithmetic Coding + Statistical Modeling =
Data Compression (Dr. Dobb's Journal, Feb. 1991)
Three Concepts: Information |