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Understanding Error Correction: The Magic of Hamming Codes
Have you ever scratched a CD or a DVD, only to find that it still plays? This seemingly magical phenomenon is rooted in the clever handling of data errors. Although scratches alter the 1s and 0s on the disk, data can still be retrieved, thanks to sophisticated error correction techniques. This article delves into the world of data transmission and error correction codes, with a focus on Hamming codes—one of the earliest and most significant methods developed to handle such issues.