Encoding, Morse Code and the Alphabetical Order
When you
transmit a message across any medium (wires, cables, fiber optics, or even
wireless!), you have a few common problems. I’ll focus on one of those problems
in this blog, namely the optimal way to “encode” the message. Encoding is easy
to understand:
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In
the digital world, everything is a 1 or a 0. So we need to assign combinations
of 1’s and 0’s to mean every letter of a language. Encoding is coming up with
such a unique combination of 1’s and 0’s.
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Encoding,
however, is not the same as encrypting a message. For example, Morse code
has a way to represent every character but it’s not a secret. So we say a
message in Morse is encoded but not encrypted.
An important
practical consideration in coming up with an encoding scheme is to minimize the
number of symbols while transmitting a message. Why? Because transmitting more
symbols costs more power or more bandwidth or both.
So what’s to be
done? The answer’s obvious: the most frequently used symbols should be assigned
the shortest codes (e.g. the letter “e” in the English language). Most
engineering students know of many coding systems that address exactly these
problems. But to begin with, how do you sort the symbols in decreasing order of
frequency of use?
In the age of
Big Data that we live in, that’s easy. There’s tons of data on pretty much
everything. Throw a computer to go through it and bingo! But back when Samuel
Morse (he of the Morse code fame) and his protégé, Alfred Vail, were working on
the problem, how do you think they went about finding relative frequencies of
the different letters?
Vail went to the
local newspaper office and looked over the discarded type cases. He decided to
use the discarded type case count for each letter as a pretty good
representation of the usage of the letters. As you might have guessed, Vail’s
sample size was way, way too small and way too unrepresentative of English
texts in general. All of which is why the Morse code is only 15% of the optimal
arrangement! Very inefficient, isn’t it? And yet it’s survived for so long!
And while we’re
on the topic of letters, I remembered this interesting trivia: Do you know why
the letters of the alphabet have an order (A, B, C, D…Z)? I don’t mean why that
particular order. Rather, why have any order for the letters at all? The answer lies in the creation
of the dictionary! Without an order, how would anyone know how to find a word
in the dictionary: Ergo, the alphabetical order came up and began to matter.
All this is also
why today, some argue that the alphabetical order should be done away with.
Don’t we just key in the word on the Net and get the meaning, they ask. I’m
sure kids starting at school would agree whole-heartedly!
You say, "The answer lies in the creation of the dictionary! Without an order, how would anyone know how to find a word in the dictionary: Ergo, the alphabetical order came up and began to matter", after clarifying, "I don’t mean why that particular order. Rather, why have any order for the letters at all?".
ReplyDeleteIt is not true that the alphabetical order (the standard accepted jumble, shall I say) dictionaries were the origin of the alphabetical order. The accepted order was there ages before the first dictionary was produced. For example, Greek which was the influential European language once, had an alphabetical order. You may actually trace the similarities with later European languages too, such as French or English. The standard order was always helpful for teachers instructing the beginner student. No need for each teacher to cook up his/her own preferred order, which serves no purpose. By the way, no beginner starts learning with any dictionary on the side.
I really don't know if alphabetical order is worth becoming extinct. Often people use it for some indexing and referring. I suppose you are discussing a time when there will be no paper at all but only computers and micro-devices for everything! All indexes would be computers own thing. Nobody would scroll any index list on paper manually, I suppose. But these possibilities do speak in your argument's favor.
By the way, while the European languages have only "agreed upon jumble serving as the alphabetical order", in India, from age-old times organized the alphabets in a logical, meaningful order. The influence of this order can be seen practically in all the major languages that have Sanskrit influence. Even the Dravidian Tamil imbibed the same, with some improvements and while ignoring phonetic exactness in a small number of sounds, such as p and b sounds.
I am of the opinion that we have done a vastly more intelligent organization of not only alphabets but also musical notes organization in our Classical music system. Unfortunately, in olden times application of knowledge and intelligence was not predominantly controlled by commercialism. Today we are succumbing to both commercialism and dry-intellectualism. A time may come when we may things in a different light.