Shortcut for hamming code

I have had several questions on why this shortcut is not working for some.. Sorry that I have not had time to respond.. (Its my last quarter of school!! Woohoo) Anyways.. remember that if you have m parity bits, it can cover bits from 1 up to 2^m-1 . If you subtract out the parity bits, you are left with bits that can be use for the data. So you get all the possible Hamming codes to be 2^m -1.. meaning your Hamming Code can be 3, 7, 14, 31... bits long. If you have a number that is lets say 11 bits long.. this shortcut will not work, because it is not a hamming code. Hope this makes sense.. happy hamming! Extra Credit for Final Dr. Schubert, CSUSB, Digital Logic CSE 310