Compression of random binary data

[Paul Moore]

On 24 October 2017 at 09:43, Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Paul Moore wrote:
>>
>> But that's not "compression", that's simply using a better encoding.
>> In the technical sense, "compression" is about looking at redundancies
>> that go beyond the case of how effectively you pack data into the
>> bytes available.
>
>
> There may be a difference in the way the terms are used, but
> I don't think there's any fundamental difference. Compression
> is about finding clever ways to make the encoding better.

Agreed - I was trying (probably futilely, given the way this thread
has gone...) to make a distinction between purely local properties
that are typically considered in "how you encode the data" and the
detection of more global patterns, which is where what are typically
referred to as "compression" algorithms get their power. But sadly, I
don't think the OP is actually interested in understanding the
background, so the distinction wasn't really worth making :-(

> Either way, the information-theoretic limits on the number
> of bits needed are the same.

Precisely.
Paul