The page you are reading is part of a draft (v2.0) of the "No bullshit guide to math and physics."
The text has since gone through many edits and is now available in print and electronic format. The current edition of the book is v4.0, which is a substantial improvement in terms of content and language (I hired a professional editor) from the draft version.
I'm leaving the old wiki content up for the time being, but I highly engourage you to check out the finished book. You can check out an extended preview here (PDF, 106 pages, 5MB).
file:/Users/ivan/Homes/master/Documents/Webpages/It%20is%20all%20about%20me%20April%202007/It%20is%20all%20about%20me/ivan.unixdaemons.com/blog/index5d38.html?p=87 if I was to give you a feedback channel such that the receiver can tell the sender which bits arrived correctly and which didn’t this will not imporve the capacity! Here is why: Lets use the intuitive protocol. STEP 1: I send n bits. You receive (1-p)n bits and tell me which bits you didn’t receive. STEP 2: I send the broken bits from STEP 1, there are pn of them. You receive (1-p)pn of them. and you inform me again of the ones that you missed. STEP N: I send the bits that you didn’t receive in step N-1. After a while you will have received all the bits. So lets check the rate of our new protocol_with_feedback: EQN missing…i file:/Users/ivan/Homes/master/Documents/Webpages/It%20is%20all%20about%20me%20April%202007/It%20is%20all%20about%20me/ivan.unixdaemons.com/blog/latexrender/mimetexa3dc.gif?4$Rate_{new}%20=%20\frac{total.inf.received}{total.bits.sent.down.the.line}=
file:/Users/ivan/Homes/master/Documents/Webpages/It%20is%20all%20about%20me%20April%202007/It%20is%20all%20about%20me/ivan.unixdaemons.com/blog/latexrender/mimetex2721.gif?4$\qquad\qquad=%20\frac{%20(1-p)n%20+%20(1-p)pn%20+%20(1-p)p^2n%20+\ldots%20}{n%20+%20pn%20+%20p^2n%20+%20\ldots}%20=%201-p = 1-p Crazy!