gen-state-huffman-coding-precisely-and-explain-why-it-matters-in-c1d3

State Huffman coding precisely and explain why it matters in 2-3 sentences.

# Huffman Coding **Definition:** Huffman coding is a lossless data compression algorithm that assigns variable-length binary codes to characters based on their frequency of occurrence, with more frequent characters receiving shorter codes. It constructs an optimal prefix-free binary tree by iteratively combining the two lowest-frequency nodes until a single tree remains. **Why it matters:** Huffman coding provides provably optimal compression when each character must be encoded with a whole number of bits, making it foundational to many compression formats (JPEG, MP3, ZIP). It demonstrates the practical power of greedy algorithms and tree-based encoding, serving as a building block for more sophisticated compression techniques while remaining simple enough to implement efficiently.