Encoding two 6-bit positive integers compactly

Question

Is it possible to encode two 6-bit wide positive integers a and b guaranteed to be in [0, 63] in a way that a and b are recoverable -- in fewer than 12 bits? We could obviously concatenate the binary representations (a << 6 | b). The scheme would have to allow any two arbitrary values within the given range. Can we do better than 12 bits?

There are $2^{12}$ options, and you need a different encoding for each option, so no. Of course, if you have some prior knowledge (e.g. how often each pair appears), you can improve average encoding length by using non-fixed length encodings (see e.g. Huffman codes). — , Oct 14 '20 at 14:55

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 14 '20 at 17:55

Suppose that $H\colon \{0,1\}^6 \times \{0,1\}^6 \to \{0,1\}^n$ is such that $a,b \in \{0,1\}^6$ can be recovered from $H(a,b)$. In particular, $H(a,b) \neq H(c,d)$ whenever $(a,b) \neq (c,d)$. Since there are $2^{12}$ possible inputs, and the value of $H$ on each of them is different, it follows that the range of $H$ must consist of at least $2^{12}$ different points. Since $\{0,1\}^n$ has $2^n$ points, we conclude that $n \geq 12$.

Encoding two 6-bit positive integers compactly

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