klheyman's comments

But your own example implies that you could've achieved the same results by simply using the "and" operator: ring AND mathematics. No reason to give up privacy.

I'm actually surprised that your friends didn't get the Wikipedia entry on "ring" among their top results. When I ran the search on both Google and Bing, it came up second.

I got some further clarifications from Leonard Schulman:

He writes, "Yes, a tree code is a near-isomorphic image of a tree metric. No, this has nothing to do with the Shannon capacity of graphs."

Thank you again for your comments.

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. You've hit the heart of the challenge in any kind of science writing: Trying not to frighten off those unfamiliar with a field and therefore using metaphors, such as bubble wrap, while at least touching on some common ground for those who are (Hamming distances).

My respectful suggestion for those truly interested in following up is to contact either Leonard or Amit directly. Of necessity, any math that is translated into prose is going to be imprecise, and thus, unsatisfying.

To answer a few of the specific questions that were brought up:

Yes, it is essentially an existence proof. At least for now. Yes, that paper is a good starting point. Also take a look at Amit's work. Yes, buses inside chips is something they think it could be useful for. (Sigh) I wish there were a better introduction to tree codes at a lay level. Believe me, I tried very hard to find one. FWIW, both scientists vetted the explanations.