Suppose that the output of a process that generates independent symbols {A, B, C, D, E} with known probabilities {in the same order: 0.2, 0.33, 0.1, 0.07, 0.3 } needs to be communicated. If we constructed a Huffman code to represent the symbols, what would be the average number of binary digits/symbol that would result? (Your answer should be accurate up to the first decimal point. Type a number only - no units.)

To solve this problem, we first need to understand what a Huffman code is. A Huffman code is a particular type of optimal prefix code that is commonly used for lossless data compression. The process of creating a Huffman code can be done with a simple algorithm.

Here are the steps to solve this problem:

1. First, we list the symbols and their probabilities:

   A: 0.2 B: 0.33 C: 0.1 D: 0.07 E: 0.3

2. Then, we sort these symbols in increasing order of their probabilities:

   D: 0.07 C: 0.1 A: 0.2 B: 0.33 E: 0.3

3. We start building the Huffman tree from the bottom up. We take the two symbols with the smallest probabilities and combine them into a binary tree with the symbol with the smaller probability on the left:

   (D,C): 0.17 A: 0.2 B: 0.33 E: 0.3

4. We repeat this process, always combining the two smallest probabilities, until we have a single tree:

   ((D,C),A): 0.37 B: 0.33 E: 0.3

   (((D,C),A),B): 0.7 E: 0.3

   ((((D,C),A),B),E): 1.0

5. Now we assign binary digits to each edge in the tree, with left edges getting a 0 and right edges getting a 1. The Huffman code for each symbol is the sequence of binary digits along the path from the root to the symbol:

   D: 000 C: 001 A: 01 B: 10 E: 11

6. Finally, we calculate the average number of binary digits per symbol, which is the sum of the product of the probability of each symbol and the number of binary digits in its Huffman code:

   (0.07 * 3) + (0.1 * 3) + (0.2 * 2) + (0.33 * 2) + (0.3 * 2) = 2.1

So, the average number of binary digits per symbol that would result from this Huffman code is 2.1.