But what are Hamming codes? The origin of error correction

3Blue1Brown · 3.1M views · 2020 · 20:05

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Information theory & signal processingRecreational & visual mathexplainer

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN recommends it as an invaluable, intuitive explanation of Hamming codes that pairs well with hardware-oriented treatments.

What it is

3Blue1Brown's discovery-oriented introduction to error correction codes, building up Hamming codes from the puzzle of locating a flipped bit. It explains the parity-check idea and why it is so efficient.

Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2020 to 2023.

What Hacker News said

Strong rec Hanschri · 2022-11 · on “The essence of Reed-Solomon coding”

To understand how error correction works and to learn more about Hamming codes & Reed-Solomon, 3Blue1Brown and Ben Eater were invaluable. 3Blue1Brown and Ben Eater are by far some of the best educational content creators within their fields, mathematics and computer engineering respectively. I would strongly recommend anyone interested in the topic to check out any of these videos: How to send a self-correcting message (Hamming codes): [this video] Hamming codes part 2, the elegance of it all: [LINK] And any of Ben Eater's five videos on error correction: [LINK] As an aside, Ben Eater does all of his videos and demonstrations using an 8-bit computer he has built step by step in videos on a breadb

Recommends the__alchemist · 2020-09 · on “What is error correction? Hamming codes in hardware by Ben Eater [video]”

Nice! pairs well with the 3Blue1Br video on the subject: [this video] Hamming's book The Art of doing Science and Engineer's a solid read. Mixed topics, centered around problem solving techniques, and pitfalls.

Recommends adamisntdead · 2021-09 · on “A layman’s guide to recreational mathematics videos”

I'm a big fan of this video from Reducible on Huffman codes: [LINK] , and from 3Blue1Brown on Hamming codes: [this video]

Recommends WaffleIronMaker · 2023-08 · on “You Won’t Believe This One Weird CPU Instruction (2019)”

If you want to learn more about Hamming Codes from a mathematical perspective, I recommend 3Blue1Brown's YouTube series: > How to send a self-correcting message (Hamming codes) - [this video] > Hamming codes part 2, the elegance of it all - [LINK] Associated with Ben Eater's video, if you want a perspective regarding low level computer hardware: > What is error correction? Hamming codes in hardware - [LINK]