Minimum Description Length

Minimum Description Length

The minimum description length (MDL) principle is a formalization of Occam's Razor in which the best hypothesis for a given set of data is the one that leads to the best compression of the data. MDL was introduced by Jorma Rissanen in 1978. It is an important concept in information theory and learning theory.

Read more about Minimum Description Length:  Overview, Example of MDL, MDL Notation, Related Concepts

Famous quotes containing the words minimum, description and/or length:

    “After decades of unappreciated drudgery, American women just don’t do housework any more—that is, beyond the minimum that is required in order to clear a path from the bedroom to the front door so they can get off to work in the mourning.”
    —Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)

    “I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “You will, I am sure, agree with me that ... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.”
    —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)