Number 5 pp. Optimization Problem Over a Lattice of Binary Trees D. Stott Parker, Prasad Ram Abstract. We show that the space of all binary Huffman codes for a finite alphabet defines a lattice , ordered by the imbalance of the code trees.
Submodular functions are discrete analogues of convex functions.
These results give perspective on Huffman coding and suggest new approaches to coding as optimization over a lattice. 26B25, 26D15 PII .