 Solution

Work over the finite field ${\mathbb{F}}_2$. Reduce polynomials modulo $X_i^2-X_i$, so their monomials are square-free. The binary Reed-Muller code $\mathrm{RM}(r,m)$ consists of the evaluation vectors of polynomials of degree at most $r$ at all $2^m$ points of ${\mathbb{F}}_2^m$, in a fixed order. This is a linear code of length $2^m$ and dimension ${\sum }_{j=0}^r\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{m}{j}\right)$, for $0\le r\le m$. Square-free monomials give independent evaluation functions, as follows inductively by splitting according to the last variable.

The minimum Hamming distance of a linear code equals its least nonzero Hamming weight. The result isHere $r=0$ is the repetition code, while $r=m$ is the full binary vector space and has distance one. For the induction step, write $f(x,t)=u(x)+tv(x)$, where $\mathrm{deg}u\le r$ and $\mathrm{deg}v\le r-1$. Its evaluation vector is $(u,u+v)$, the Reed-Muller bar-product recursion. If $v=0$, its nonzero Hamming weight is at least $2d(r,m-1)=2^{m-r}$, with the full-space endpoint treated as above. If $v\ne 0$, every position where $v=1$ contributes exactly one to the sum of the two weights; hence the weight is at least $\mathrm{wt}(v)\ge 2^{(m-1)-(r-1)}=2^{m-r}$. The monomial $X_1\cdots X_r$ is one exactly on $2^{m-r}$ points, attaining the bound. Degrees greater than $m$ give the same full code; the zero code at negative degree has no nonzero word whose weight could define a finite minimum.