Entropy As A Measure of Similarity
Besides using entropy encoding as a way to compress digital data, an entropy encoder can also be used to measure the amount of similarity between streams of data. This is done by generating an entropy coder/compressor for each class of data; unknown data is then classified by feeding the uncompressed data to each compressor and seeing which compressor yields the highest compression. The coder with the best compression is probably the coder trained on the data that was most similar to the unknown data.
Read more about this topic: Entropy Encoding
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