What to use for finding as many syntax errors as possible.

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 at 14:13, <avi.e.gross at gmail.com> wrote:
> With the internet today, we are used to expecting error correction to come
> for free. Do you really need one of every 8 bits to be a parity bit, which
> only catches may half of the errors...

Fortunately, we have WAY better schemes than simple parity, which was
only really a thing in the modem days. (Though I would say that
there's still a pretty clear distinction between a good message where
everything has correct parity, and line noise where half of them
don't.) Hamming codes can correct one-bit errors (and detect two-bit
errors) at a price of log2(size)+1 bits of space. Here's a great
rundown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8jsijhllIA

There are other schemes too, but Hamming codes are beautifully elegant
and easy to understand.

ChrisA