Steam-powered Turing Machine University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering
 CSE 533: Error-Correcting Codes: Constructions and Algorithms, Autumn 2006
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Instructor:

Venkatesan Guruswami
Meeting times: Wednesday 3:00-4:20pm and Fridays 10:30-11:50am at CSE 403
Office hours: After class or by appointment.

Mailing List

Course announcement

Problem Sets

Lecture notes

Here is the style file scribe.sty for preparing lecture notes.

Reading links

Reference material

We will not follow any one particular textbook. The closest resource is the excellent set of lecture notes for Madhu Sudan's coding theory course at MIT: Notes from 2001 and 2004.

The basic material on codes we discuss in initial lectures can be found in one of many textbooks (some of which are listed below), but the recent algorithmic developments are probably not adequately covered in any of these: Though we won't cover much information theory in this course, if your curiosity is aroused on aspects such as entropy, mutual information, capacity theorems, source coding, etc., there is the classic information theory text

Recommended preparation

The principal prerequisite for this class is some "mathematical maturity", or more specifically comfort with basics of linear algebra (vector spaces, basis, dual spaces); finite fields, field extensions and polynomials over finite fields; elementary probability; and analysis of algorithms.

If you are not comfortable with your algebra background, you can read the algebra material in any of the above 3 coding texts, your favorite algebra text, or these notes due to Madhu Sudan. You can also do this "as the need arises" in the lectures since we won't get to much algebraic stuff until a few lectures into the class.

Class Assignments and Grading

Coursework will include preparing Latex scribe notes for one or two lectures and doing a couple of problem sets. Posting scribe notes promptly is important to complement the lectures, and so students are urged to cooperate in this regard. The "grade" on scribe notes will be a function of both the quality of the notes and the timeliness with which it is handed in.

Final grades will be based on the scribe notes, class participation, and performance on the problem sets. There will be no exams.


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