A dyadic (or 2-''adic'') distribution is a specific type of discrete
probability distribution
In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon i ...
that is of some theoretical importance in
data compression.
Definition
A dyadic distribution is a
probability distribution
In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon i ...
whose
probability mass function
In probability and statistics, a probability mass function is a function that gives the probability that a discrete random variable is exactly equal to some value. Sometimes it is also known as the discrete density function. The probability mass ...
is
:
where
is some whole number.
It is possible to find a binary code defined on this distribution, which has an average code length that is equal to the
entropy.
[ Cover, T.M., Joy A. Thomas, J.A. (2006) ''Elements of information theory'', Wiley. ]
References
* Cover, T.M., Joy A. Thomas, J.A. (2006) ''Elements of information theory'', Wiley.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dyadic Distribution
Types of probability distributions
Data compression
Discrete distributions