Paper 2, Section II, G
Part II, 2019
Describe the Huffman coding scheme and prove that Huffman codes are optimal.
Are the following statements true or false? Justify your answers.
(i) Given messages with probabilities a Huffman coding will assign a unique set of word lengths.
(ii) An optimal code must be Huffman.
(iii) Suppose the words of a Huffman code have word lengths . Then
[Throughout this question you may assume that a decipherable code with prescribed word lengths exists if and only if there is a prefix-free code with the same word lengths.]