dkirmani comments on Contest: An Alien Message

[dkirmani]

The zipped version of the message is 59.47% the size of the orginal. DEFLATE (the zipping algorithm) works by using shorter encodings for commonly-used bytes, and by eliminating duplicated strings. Possible next steps include investigating the frequencies of various bytes (histograms, Huffman trees).

[dkirmani]

Bytewise tallies:

array([156, 117,  71,  90, 114,  95,  65,  59,  97,  49,  80,  60,  58,
        52,  37,  57,  80,  28,  79,  53,  58,  53,  76,  31,  77,  30,
        47,  41,  50,  33,  30,  28,  43,  31,  43,  36,  59,  38,  33,
        37,  52,  41,  50,  37,  33,  55,  75,  52,  59,  50,  37,  44,
        34,  23,  27,  51,  41,  15,  21,  46,  55,  47,  24, 903, 335,
        59,  76,  38,  47,  37, 102,  47,  81,  50,  68,  33,  45,  28,
        65,  38,  76,  55,  30,  42,  61,  43,  70,  74,  54,  39,  52,
        48,  37,  37,  19,  49,  97,  65,  31,  55,  70,  48, 131,  60,
        62,  42,  60,  64,  42,  42,  39,  39,  71,  37,  55,  49,  77,
        38,  66,  23,  66,  45,  52,  37,  47,  35,  80,  43,  78,  46,
        45,  36,  21,  46,  80,  38,  43,  46,  84,  47,  49,  39,  46,
        54,  51,  19,  43,  32,  66,  28,  48,  56,  59,  40,  62,  41,
        48,  37,  47,  20,  57,  29,  61,  26,  45,  34,  76,  74,  21,
        67,  66,  30,  38,  43,  49,  56,  82,  41,  42,  54,  63,  43,
        53,  74,  35,  49,  53,  47,  71,  56,  46, 798, 335,  45,  52,
        65,  50,  53,  32,  52,  55,  28,  66,  35,  60,  65,  73,  48,
        58,  85,  37,  58,  65,  72,  64,  58,  51,  42,  62,  59,  60,
        35,  82,  55,  60,  80,  68,  77, 101,  57,  95,  73,  62,  45,
        73,  45, 109,  36,  88,  84, 133, 157,  85, 117, 142, 123, 100,
        95, 112,  80,  96,  82, 135, 107,  82,  84])