Talk:Arithmetic coding/As a generalized change of radix

Goof?

The J entry gives different values for most of these examples than Go/Perl/Perl 6/Ruby/Sidef.

The difference seems to be related to the difference between "frequency" and "cumulative frequency".

The wikipedia writeup uses frequency when describing the "As a generalized change of radix" mechanism, and then introduces "cumulative frequency" when describing how to reverse the process.

Anyways, it looks like Go/Perl/Perl 6/Ruby/Sidef are using a different algorithm than the one described in wikipedia, as they all use "cumulative frequency" rather than "frequency" when encoding.

Or perhaps the wikipedia page is in error? Do we have anyone with sufficient background in the history of this algorithm to make that determination? --Rdm (talk) 17:44, 27 January 2016 (UTC)