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Statistical Compressors
Concept
Algorithm
Example
Comparison (H vs. SF)

Concept

The Shannon-Fano algorithm, the predecessor of Huffman encoding, uses a similar algorithm. The fundamental principles are the same: codes for more frequent characters are shorter than those for less frequent characters, and the prefix principle still applies. However, whereas Huffman encoding relies on a bottom-up method of determining the bit codes for each symbol, Shannon and Fano used a top-down method.

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