Chapter 9 - Latin Squares and Codes

This chapter presents Latin squares and codes. The codes considered in this chapter are those used for communication of messages of all kinds. The messages are encoded into digital form for transmission and may be ciphered to render them unintelligible to unauthorized interceptors. The primary message may be one-dimensional (e.g., the message may consist of English sentences) or two-dimensional (e.g., it may be required to transmit a picture by radio). In any event, the message has to be decoded at the receiving end and any errors of transmission detected and, if possible, corrected. For this reason, an error-detecting and correcting code will usually be used.