Editing Talk:2739: Data Quality

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Hash tables aren't lossy, maybe Randall means hash functions? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 17:06, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
:I was thinking more a (subset of) a {{w|Rainbow table}}, than an associative array... Although such things tend not to preserve/respect item order (in reading, writing and altering in general), which is potentially information-lossy. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.185|172.69.79.185]] 18:50, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
::Hash tables have an ultra-low collision rate, as compared to the transforms used in packetwise error-correction... Since the comic is primarily focused on contrasting media fidelity with direct alteration of the content, ciphers seem a less direct association than content distribution networks? Given the context presented, my immediate association was the use of both piece & whole-pack hash verification, which has a collision rate so low terms like "number of particles in the universe" start entering the conversation. Upon further consideration, I wonder if Randall is referring to plain old CRC32 hash checking? Or the SHA hashes commonly used to verify disc downloads? (If it passes SHA *and* torrent content checking, I'd say you've probably got better chances of 1:1 integrity, than any original medium has of retaining it?) 
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:51, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
: Maybe it was to be about '''cuckoo filters''', which are probabilistic data structure alternative to classic Bloom filter, which are based on space-efficient variants of cuckoo hashing? --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 14:05, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
::Hash tables don't have to store the original data at all, technically; they are commonly done as hash table->KEY:DATA or hash table->KEY:Pointer to data (or suchlike), but hash table->present is a valid hashing scheme, which results in a likely verification that you have the right data (but not guarunteed because collisions) but no way of reconstructing the data itself. [[User:Mneme|Mneme]] ([[User talk:Mneme|talk]]) 02:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
:He’s casually referring to the hash conflict situation in common implementations of hash tables: the table of hashes, not the whole structure. You have O(n) lookup speed proportional to the impact of uniqueness lost in the hash lookup. The point is that this is the same way that bloom filters {which also usually need a source of truth to be useful) are used. The two concepts perform the same function but with different degrees of lossiness, different widenesses of matching. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.140|162.158.62.140]] 16:40, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

GIF's aren't lossy either, though often other formats can't be converted to GIF without discarding information. [[User:Bemasher|Bemasher]] ([[User talk:Bemasher|talk]]) 18:27, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

:I think that's the point. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.203|172.68.50.203]] 20:12, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
:GIFs are lossy in the very act of creating them: the actual colors of the real object have to be smashed down into (I think it’s) 256 different colors, resulting in an image that even human perception recognizes as crappy. Even the so-called ‘lossless’ formats such as PNG are lossy in the act of creation, just not as drastically as GIFs. A truly ‘lossless’ format would have to specify the exact intensity of every wavelength of electromagnetic radiation emanating from every atom of the original object. Good luck with that. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.99|172.71.151.99]] 01:00, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
:::GIFs can only have 256 colors per *frame*, but can have many frames, so 16,777,216 (256^3) colors total should be possible. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 01:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
::::Temporal dithering? Don't know if that's the term for it, but it's the one I'd use to describe it.
::::And I remember trying that on a BBC Microcomputer, messing with fast direct video-memory copying and also the interupts to get the high-res but monochome MODE 0 (1-bitplane, but with some choice of foreground and background colours that are used that can be changed fairly rapidly, as well as in horizontal bands) to create a disconcerting effect (I wouldn't subject an epileptic to it!) that could still approximated at least a 3-bit colour-mode. Half the colour-res of  MODE 2, twice that of MODE 1, but vertical dot-res twice that of the latter and ''quadruple'' that of the former. IIRC. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.225|172.70.85.225]] 02:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
::It's subjective whether formats (even .gif) can be recognised as 'crappy'. The display format may further tune down everything so that something defined with 65536 colours is more like 256, or it could work well with any given stippling/halftoning/dithering to produce something more like the better original than the file data strictly allows (even from 6bits-per-pixel, or 3) when viewed at sufficient remove. And a .gif of a block-coloured diagram is notably better than a typical .jpg of one, despite the technically superior palette the later has. (Nobody says that an image has to be from a real-life subject, with all kinds of missing data, such as photons thst happen to hit the gap between CCD pixels but might be considered important and might well have been captured with the Mk 1 Eyeball and significantly 'noticed' by the nerves and ultimately the respective processing usters of the brain behind it... Which has a complete set of 'analogue lossiness' to it, anyway.) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.203|172.71.242.203]] 16:37, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
:I encoded the records you wanted transferred to your department's systems into a standard GIF format file. Would you prefer an MJPEG video? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.79|172.70.114.79]] 16:51, 24 February 2023 (UTC) EDIT: You're right, though. Maybe Randall has experience with color loss using GIF. In the 90's GIF was a compressed photography format, smaller than BMP. 16:54, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Someone needs to add a table describing all the formats in the chart. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:29, 17 February 2023 (UTC) 
:Yep. It needs a description of each point on the graph. I'm on my phone though... and feeling lazy after shoveling snow. 
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:54, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
::I'm tempted, but it would require learning how to MAKE a table, and my ideal table would be 5 columns, '''''TOO WIDE!''''', LOL! Table label, what scale (data quality or item quality), a description (the main thing needed), the cat version from the Title Text, and finally how the cat example applies/parallels the comic version. I could lose the "what scale" as only one isn't data quality, and I guess I could see two tables, Comic and Title/Cat (adding to cat also the Table Label column).[[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:38, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
:::Tables are actually [https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Tables quite easy to do] (if you don't intend to do much complex stuff), but also very easy to slightly mess up (temporarily - Preview is your friend, especially if you need to rowspan/colspan at all). For this purpose, nothing fancy. Header row, other rows, nothing particar special in alignment, sorting, colour (foreground and/or background), etc. It'll be fairly intelligently fitted to the browser window, according to the contents.
:::However, here (when you might have large amounts of narrative in one column), perhaps just ";"-prefix a mini-header (can include "(in Title text)" or other shorthand details) and then have ":"-prefixed 'definition' prose that rambles on about each item in freehand text. I would suggest that's as complicated as you need it, no real need for tabling at all. (But, without wanting to show you how to use a hammer, then making every problem now look like a nail to you, I think you could handle ''learning'' the basic table-markup/learning where to get the more complex stuff. So there you are.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.197|172.70.91.197]] 16:54, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
::::Oh, I've done tables in HTML many times, I'm perfectly comfortable tackling it. It's just that I'd have to take the time to look up the wiki syntax. :) Additional effort, you see. And now someone has already done it. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 15:41, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems there are two definitions of data quality that Randall is juxtaposing for comic effect: in one, quality data is data that represents the original phenomenon without error or degradation. In the other, he's applying the concept of quality to the phenomenon itself – data is better if it describes a better phenomenon. My cat is better than your cat, therefore data about my cat is better than data about your cat.  I'd like to see this concept in the explanation of the page but don't know how to add into the flow of the current text.[[User:K95|K95]] ([[User talk:K95|talk]]) 19:33, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
:I already put that in earlier. See the second sentence of the second paragraph, I called it "general excellence". [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 21:45, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

"Data are transferred in bits"...Hear, hear. I'm over 60, I still remember of stuff that is called "analog" ;-) {{unsigned|172.71.160.37|20:07, 17 February 2023 (UTC)}}
:Note, however, that we are transferring data digitally for over four thousand years. That's how long is technically possible to make a lossless copy of written story. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 22:19, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
::That's only if you're lucky enough to be still reading it in the original <s>Klingon</s> language, etc... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.184|172.69.79.184]] 22:53, 17 February 2023 (UTC) 
:::'''"It is a Klingon name!"''' 😾 
:::Transcription definitely suffers from a Darmok & Jalad type contextual dependency.
::: [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:59, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I think that "Better data" is a reference to gainful compression, and that "my better cat" doesn't specifically refer to the author but to the lyrical subject (as in poems). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.203|172.68.50.203]] 20:12, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

TIFF can contain a JPEG, which makes it technically a lossy format. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.109.33|172.69.109.33]] 23:26, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
:And an actual JPEG ''may'' be {{w|Lossless JPEG|lossless}}. (I still remember JPEG2000 being 'a thing', amongst the other situations mentioned there, but that wasn't even what I was thinking of whn I started this reply!) Yet, I think we're talking broad sweeps here. Not strict accuracy. There's Randall's trolling of us with GIF as 'lossy', frexample... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.159|172.69.79.159]]

The opening sentence of the explanation, about data loss in transit, seems a bit irrelevant to the comic, which is only concerned with lossiness in information due to format. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.197|172.70.91.197]] 10:40, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
:''Very'' relevent to the parity ones. (Leads me to believe it's a scale of "amount of provided data to represent original data". You send less than you really ought to, the more left you go, you send more than you should ''technically'' need to as you go to the right. Checksums add a little bit extra, once you get to them, and ''correcting'' checksums (hamming bits, etc) are significantly extra overhead. The whole 'better data' is basically "send a similar amount of newer information, or even more, on top of the original".) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.71|162.158.34.71]] 12:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
:: But that's about adding information to the file (which happens to be mitigation against the potential future loss of data) - not directly about the loss of data itself. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.65|172.71.178.65]] 11:23, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
::: Data can be lost (deliberately or otherwise) in the process of transfering data. That's where parity may be useful, and that's when boiling things down into hashes alone probably is not... But you may actually have good reasons/circumstances to do (or not do) either. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.224|172.70.85.224]] 19:20, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Since when is CRC-32 obsolete? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.238.6|162.158.238.6]] 08:24, 22 February 2023 (UTC)