Unit 2 Overview

Unit two was all about digital information and compression. I enjoyed presenting and researching about the JPEG file. Before doing this research I had no idea what a JPEG was and how it worked. I found it an exciting challenge to have to research this both in and out of class. I also liked formatting my presentation in order to show the information clearly and concisely. I did not enjoy the part of the presentation that was the personal fabricon. It was very difficult at first to figure out the color system and how to create that large of an image pixel by pixel. Once I got the hang of it, however, I was proud of what I created.

This unit I learned about all the different type of file types and how they hold information. These include BMP, WAV, PNG, MP3, GIF, and ZIP. I found it interesting how JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs are all image files, but they hold images in very different forms and are useful for different things. I also learned about the difference between lossy and lossless compression. Lossy compression loses some data in the process while lossless retains all file data when compressing. Compression in general encodes information with fewer bits to save space, and I learned that you can use a heuristic to accomplish this. I also learned about bytes and file sizes, and I now understand converting from kilobytes to megabytes to petabytes and more. LZW is a type of lossless compression where you take bits and put them into a dictionary. It recognizes patterns and uses a code to compress these down.

If there was anything I could learn more about, it would be the actual processes of compression. I find it interesting the mathematical formulas used in such processes and I want to explore these more deeply.