You append a single digit (a or a ) to the word according to a simple formula. How could you figure that there has been an error? The simplest solution involves appending a “parity” bit. If I sent you the following -letter word, you might receive it with a one-bit error, as.
#Cat code quantum error correction Pc
This has been achieved in a backward compatible way, which is why you have never had to “upgrade” your ASCII character set in your PC and can use a 20 year old Windows PC reasonably easily to read a newer Word document apart from a few newer encoded characters. While the number of “letters” in every word was ( digits) at the start of the system, it now extends to as many as letters. The “language” is pretty simple – the alphabet is and “words” are of the ASCII variety with a fixed number of “letters”. When the first efforts were made with digital computers, engineers realized that the problem of understanding garbled messages was slightly easier in a computer. Ist bcuz wee somtmes rceeve grbled mssgses frm othrs tht we neeed to enderstnd, andd qickyly! I thought the quantum mechanics concepts were glossed over, so decided to expand on it a little.Įlectrical engineers and digital-signal-processing engineers study error correction for a simple reason – the same reason why we study language (both spoken and written) carefully for many years in school. This article was inspired by a very nice article in Quanta magazine (by Natalie Wolchover) about the connection between error-correction codes and space-time.