English

A Normal Sequence Compressed by PPM$^*$ but not by Lempel-Ziv 78

Data Structures and Algorithms 2021-01-21 v1 Information Theory math.IT

Abstract

In this paper we compare the difference in performance of two of the Prediction by Partial Matching (PPM) family of compressors (PPM^* and the original Bounded PPM algorithm) and the Lempel-Ziv 78 (LZ) algorithm. We construct an infinite binary sequence whose worst-case compression ratio for PPM^* is 00, while Bounded PPM's and LZ's best-case compression ratios are at least 1/21/2 and 11 respectively. This sequence is an enumeration of all binary strings in order of length, i.e. all strings of length 11 followed by all strings of length 22 and so on. It is therefore normal, and is built using repetitions of de Bruijn strings of increasing order

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.04827,
  title  = {A Normal Sequence Compressed by PPM$^*$ but not by Lempel-Ziv 78},
  author = {Liam Jordon and Philippe Moser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.04827},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:26:35.730Z