We determine the critical noise level for decoding low density parity check
error correcting codes based on the magnetization enumerator (\cM), rather
than on the weight enumerator (\cW) employed in the information theory
literature. The interpretation of our method is appealingly simple, and the
relation between the different decoding schemes such as typical pairs decoding,
MAP, and finite temperature decoding (MPM) becomes clear. In addition, our
analysis provides an explanation for the difference in performance between MN
and Gallager codes. Our results are more optimistic than those derived via the
methods of information theory and are in excellent agreement with recent
results from another statistical physics approach.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
