We all know how to measure physical quantities like lengths, weights and volumes, but what about intangible quantities like knowledge and information? In this presentation we'll look at how to measure the information content of texts and images, and relate those measures to how much files can be compressed for digital storage and transmission. We'll also look at Huffman coding as an essential method of data encoding for compression.
Professor Roger Eastman, Ph.D. College Park 1990, teaches at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore. In his research he works on questions of perception: how do we pick out useful information from all that we see and hear? In his teaching he asks how to make computer science accessible to introductory students: how can we make interesting ideas in the field understandable and useful for beginners?