string the past over so this is roughly how Lempel Ziv works you just look for matches that you're trying to compress and past and copy them over and so what why is this a good idea okay so why is this a good idea so just very roughly why this was a good idea if the source of symbols you see is independent then whatever symbol you're at right now will reoccur that will will actually reoccur if you wait long enough and the reoccurrence time is as a geometric distribution so the average reoccurrence time is just one of the probability of