Huffman Coding
Domain: Algorithms
🎯 Motivation
A greedy algorithm that compresses data by using shorter codes for frequent characters and longer codes for rare ones. Used in ZIP files.
📋 Concrete Example
In English, e is common, z is rare. Huffman gives e a 2-bit code and z a 10-bit code. Total bits are much fewer than fixed 8-bit per character.
🔗 Analogy
Morse code: common letters like E have a short signal (one dot), rare letters like Q have a long signal (dash-dash-dot-dash). Huffman does this automatically.