The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech: A Humorous Look at Coding Theory
The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech (1984)
I present a lighthearted biography of Alice and Bob, the archetypal figures in coding theory who navigate noisy phone lines, eavesdropping enemies, and mutual distrust. Through their chaotic attempts at tax fraud and coups, I explain the three pillars of our field: source coding for compression, channel coding for error correction, and secrecy coding for privacy. This tale reveals how we turn impossible communication challenges into solvable mathematical problems.
Alice will happily attempt, with someone she doesn't trust, whom she cannot hear clearly, and who is probably someone else, to fiddle her tax returns and to organize a coup d'etat, while at the same time minimizing the cost of the phone call.