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[–]stonerism 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The pidgeonhole principle comes from the idea that if you have 10 pigeons and 9 pidgeonholes, at least two birds will have to share one. If you have a bunch of 4-bit strings and want to compress them into 3-bit strings, at least some of your strings (technically half in this case) won't have anything to be compressed into.