Golomb coding is a lossless data compression

Lossless data compression

Lossless data compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data. The term lossless is in contrast to lossy data compression, which only allows an approximation of the original data to be reconstructed, in exchange...

 method using a family of data compression

Data compression

In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....

 codes invented by Solomon W. Golomb

Solomon W. Golomb

Solomon Wolf Golomb is an American mathematician and engineer and a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, best known to the general public and fans of mathematical games as the inventor of polyominoes, the inspiration for the computer game Tetris...

 in the 1960s. Alphabets following a geometric distribution will have a Golomb code as an optimal prefix code

Prefix code

A prefix code is a type of code system distinguished by its possession of the "prefix property"; which states that there is no valid code word in the system that is a prefix of any other valid code word in the set...

, making Golomb coding highly suitable for situations in which the occurrence of small values in the input stream is significantly more likely than large values.

Rice coding (invented by Robert F.