Section 3.1 - 3.2

The Euclidean Algorithm is pretty intuitive ad its cool how relatively simple and powerful it is. I'd like to see a better proof of the theorem that every positive integer is a product of primes. The proof in the book seems too trivial to be complete, but maybe I'm just paranoid about it.

Section 2.9 - 2.11

The fact that something as simple as a one time pad is so strong is pretty interesting. I wonder if functions other then XOR could be used.

The construction of the LFSRs are sort of complicated I like to see a simpler example worked out in class.

Section 2.5 - 2.8

The modular arithmetic involved in inverting the matrices for the hill cipher was sort of hard to follow. After reading the appropriate section in chapter 3 it became much clearer. I would still like to go through the example step by step using a computer to check the matrix operations in order to make sure its correct.
The Sherlock Holmes story was entertaining but it felt a bit too contrived. I under the authors desire to emphasize the importance of frequency analysis and mastery of the language but that example even though entertaining felt out of place.
The ease in breaking the playfair cipher was interesting I wonder how larger values of n would effect things.

Section 2.1 - 2.4

The first method for breaking the Vigenere cipher was slightly difficult to understand though the second method was much clearer. Just trying random letters for frequencies in the vector seemed very akward.

I thought the affine ciphers were pretty cool and it would be interesting to see what would happen if a gamma and delta were added to the function. Also the digram method seemed very cumbersome but it was interesting to see how the proximity of certain letters could be used to crack substitution ciphers.

First Post

Shant Hovsepian, 4th year Senior Computer Science

Discrete Math
Linear Algebra
Differential Equations
More Linear Algebra
Applied Stats/Probability

I'm taking Math 116 because I'm extremely interested in crypto both theoretically and applied to computer systems.

The most effective math professor I had actually provided very clear and detailed solutions to all the homework problems assigned.

The least effective math professor I had would give extremely convoluted lectures that involved only greek variables and no actual numbers. He would lecture at a very rapid pace and insist on giving detailed proofs for a intro calculus class. His exams were always discouragingly difficult.

You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I'm obsessed with penguins.