I see lots of comments talking about FEC. That's not how the article reads to me. Granted the author (or I?) may be completely out in left field, but here's my take on what it says:

Let's suppose you have a mathematical process that outputs a stream of [useful] data. The description of the process is much, much smaller than the output. You can "compress" the data by sending the process (or equation) instead. Think π. Do you transmit a million digits of π or do you transmit the instruction "π to a million digits"? The latter is shorter.

Now, reverse the process: given an arbitrary set of data, find an equation (or process) that represents it. Not easy for sure. Perhaps not possible. I recall as a teenager reading an article about fractals and compression that called on the reader to imagine a fractal equation that could re-output your specific arbitrary data.

If I've totally missed the article's point, please correct me, but explain why it also talks about algebra.

EDIT: I re-read and noticed this: "If part of the message is lost, the receiver can solve the equation to derive the missing data." I can see the FEC nod here.

Guh. I guess I'm blind tonight. "Wireless networks are in desperate need for forward error correction (FEC), and that’s exactly what coded TCP provides." I cannot for the life of me understand why they'd need to keep this a secret.