Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/ii/paper-2/3h/solution

The binary symmetric channel with crossover probability has channel matrix
Maximum-likelihood decoding chooses a codeword maximizing , while minimum-distance decoding chooses one minimizing the Hamming distance . For a block of length sent through a binary symmetric channel,
When , the final factor decreases strictly with the distance. Thus maximum-likelihood and minimum-distance decoding agree.
For the length-three repetition code , majority decoding is wrong exactly when at least two bits flip. Therefore

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