alt Hacker NewsNo.. they're not. Do you understand random (the apparent or actual lack of definite patterns or predictability[0]) or compression (reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy[1])?
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IncreasePosts • today at 7:33 AM
Over infinite runs, you can't compress random data, but that doesn't mean any finite string of random digits is incompressible
thin_carapace • today at 4:22 AM
by this definition, a random dataset could apparently present no patterns, while presenting non apparent patterns.
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I could write a program to generate the first 100MB of pi in a couple kilobytes. That certainly counts as “data compression” but isn’t useful outside this particular problem instance.