mreid

# Example Huffman coding implementation
# Distributions are represented as dictionaries of { 'symbol': probability }
# Codes are dictionaries too: { 'symbol': 'codeword' }

def huffman(p):
    '''Return a Huffman code for an ensemble with distribution p.'''
    assert(sum(p.values()) == 1.0) # Ensure probabilities sum to 1

    # Base case of only two symbols, assign 0 or 1 arbitrarily
    if(len(p) == 2):