system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Data Compression. How can information be reduced in size and still be the same?
gpt
Let's do this in a really simple, visual kind of way. Here's two ways of expressing the same thing:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

17 W's.

Now, they both show the same thing. But the second takes up only 6 characters (including the space), while the first takes up 17 characters

The same basic idea is how data compression works. If you've got a piece of information that repeats itself a lot, you can compress it like that.