Best Way to Compress a File: A 7th Grade Science Fair Project!
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Transcript of Best Way to Compress a File: A 7th Grade Science Fair Project!
How does file compression work?
To make it simple, let’s take this famous quote:
“Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country”. Notice that almost each word appears twice and that there 79 characters. When you compress a file, the computer takes the data that repeats and puts it in a “dictionary” and alphanumeric data. So the compressed phrase would be 1234567890—13607845, and the dictionary would be 1-ask, 2-not, 3-what, 4-your, and so on… until you run out of characters to add. That means the phrase after compression would be just only 19 characters!
What are the different types of file compression?
There are many software and types of file compression out there, but .rar compression with WinRAR has been known the be the best, along with .zip compression with 7Zip. The purpose of this experiment is to find out which compression software & format would have both quality and quantity.
Software
File Type
Windows Explorer (control)
.zip (control)
7Zip
.7z .zip
WinRAR
.zip .rar (normal) .rar (best compression)
.rar (fastest compression)
Lev
el o
f IV
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Software
File Type
Trial 1 Time
Trial 1 Size
Trial 1 Score
Trial 2 Time
Trial 2 Size
Trial 2 Score
Trial 3 Time
Trial 3 Size
Trial 3 Score
Average Score
Windows Explorer
.zip
28.4
44.7
73.1
28.5
44.7
73.0
FAILED!
73.05
7Zip
.7z
.zip
62.1 6.4
33.2 43.7
95.3 50.1
62 6.4
33.2 43.7
95.2 50.1
62 6.3
33.2 43.8
95.2 50.1
95.23 50.1
WinRAR
.rar (norm)
.rar (fast)
.rar (small)
.zip
30.1 20 30 6.9
41 42.3 40.7 44.4
71.1 60.3 70.7 51.3
30.1 20 30.1 6.7
41 42.3 40.7 44.4
71.1 60.3 70.8 51.3
30.1 20 30 6.7
41 42.3 40.7 44.3
71.1 60.3 70.7 51
71.1 60.3 70.7 51.2
Note: 100.1 mb of files were compressed! Remember that lower scores are better!
As I d
id th
is experim
ent, I n
oticed
that m
y hyp
oth
esis was
wro
ng
as usin
g 7Z
ip w
ith .zip
com
pressio
n h
ad th
e lo
west
score. O
verall, the
com
pressed
file sizes are pre
tty mu
ch th
e
same acro
ss the
bo
ard w
hile
the
time varie
s wid
ely.
During this experiment, I tested 7 different ways to compress some files. I learned how to actually go advanced into compressing a file and I also learned how to use the software.
My results from my experiment proved my hypothesis wrong… I had barely any experience with file compression prior to doing this experiment and the internet generally said using WinRAR with .rar compression would be the best. However the internet was wrong . It actually resulted in using 7Zip with .zip compression being the best! Within my results, I noticed that my trials for WinRAR were pretty much constant and the ending compression size were pretty much the same!
Problems that may have affected my experiment are probably inaccuracies in my screen capture software. I noticed that when I looked at the footage, some frames seemed to be “skipped”. Also, the points system may not have been the best way to find out the best way to compress a file…
Works Cited