Talk:1381: Margin

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 07:58, 13 June 2014 by 108.162.215.47 (talk)
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Isn't it possible that a mathematician knows about the existance or the proof of something, but doen't know how to technically do it? In this case, the margin remark would be accurate and not so funny. They have found a proof of existance for infinite information compression, but not yet discovered an actual method to do it. 141.101.104.56 05:32, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, when there's no example, it's called a pure existence theorem. If you actually demonstrate an example, that is a constructive proof. Mattflaschen (talk) 05:38, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Actually the proof of the Shannon-Hartley theorem is non-constructive. It tells you the data rate of the best possible channel coding, but does not tell you how to achieve it! 108.162.215.47 07:58, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Setting font-size to 0 would be the same as not printing any information at all, you'll still use the same number of bits and be able to send the text to other computers which can read the information. The Shannon-Hartley theorem is, as far as I can see from the wikipedia article, about analogue channels anyway. --Buggz (talk) 06:16, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Isn't this also a reference to Jan Sloot's digital compression mechanism where a movie would fit into 8 kbyte? Kaa-ching (talk) 07:36, 13 June 2014 (UTC)