Quality of the Huffman Code

• The Huffman code is within one bit of the entropy lower bound.

• Huffman code does not work well with a two symbol alphabet.

  • Example: P(0) = 1/100, P(1) = 99/100
  • HC = 1 bits/symbol
  • H = -((1/100)*log2(1/100) + (99/100)log2(99/100)) = .08 bits/symbol

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