Perfect ternary Golay code | |
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Named after | Marcel J. E. Golay |
Classification | |
Type | Linear block code |
Block length | 11 |
Message length | 6 |
Rate | 6/11 ~ 0.545 |
Distance | 5 |
Alphabet size | 3 |
Notation | -code |
Extended ternary Golay code | |
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Named after | Marcel J. E. Golay |
Classification | |
Type | Linear block code |
Block length | 12 |
Message length | 6 |
Rate | 6/12 = 0.5 |
Distance | 6 |
Alphabet size | 3 |
Notation | -code |
In coding theory, the ternary Golay codes are two closely related error-correcting codes. The code generally known simply as the ternary Golay code is an -code, that is, it is a linear code over a ternary alphabet; the relative distance of the code is as large as it possibly can be for a ternary code, and hence, the ternary Golay code is a perfect code. The extended ternary Golay code is a [12, 6, 6] linear code obtained by adding a zero-sum check digit to the [11, 6, 5] code. In finite group theory, the extended ternary Golay code is sometimes referred to as the ternary Golay code.
The ternary Golay code consists of 36 = 729 codewords. Its parity check matrix is
Any two different codewords differ in at least 5 positions. Every ternary word of length 11 has a Hamming distance of at most 2 from exactly one codeword. The code can also be constructed as the quadratic residue code of length 11 over the finite field F3.
Used in a football pool with 11 games, the ternary Golay code corresponds to 729 bets and guarantees exactly one bet with at most 2 wrong outcomes.