Math 187 - Spring 2008
Welcome to the (sparse) homepage for Professor Farina's Math 187 class. Here you can find some useful course-related stuff, including contact information for your professor and TAs, homework assignments, a syllabus, information about sending encrypted email, and important announcements which we may or may not make from time to time.
announcements
(6/07/08) Final Exam. Download yours now!
(6/02/08) Here's a list of topics we've covered since the second midterm, with relevant places in the textbook to read: information theory and entropy of natural languages (p. 326-332 and p. 335-342), RSA (p. 164-186 and 189-192), Discrete logs and ElGamal (p. 201-208 and 212-213). I'll probably add to this list at some point this week, especially if anyone reminds me of other topics we've covered since the midterm!
(5/25/08) Homework 7 is now available. Note that most of the questions are about RSA, which we haven't actually discussed yet. I plan on starting RSA on Wednesday, so the due date for this assignment is Monday June 2 (and might get pushed back further if we don't get enough done on Wednesday.)
(5/24/08) Even more stuff related to doing the email assignment on a Windows machine. My friend jason wrote up a guide last year which can be found at
http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/handouts/GPGWindows.html
i think that page might be password protected though, so if it prompts you for a username and password use crypto as the username, and farina as the password.
(5/22/08) Some statistics from the midterm:
Median: 31.5
Mean: 30.20
Min: 12
Max: 40
St.Dev: 7.04
(5/22/08) Here are some additional links that might help if you plan to complete the encrypted email assignment on a Windows machine. Thanks to Youssef for this info! Here's the email he sent me...
The stuff below works for windows, probably not with macs.
1st step: ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32cli-1.4.9.exe is GnuPG 1.4.9 compiled for Microsoft Windows.
2nd step: ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32cli-1.4.9.exe.sig is Signature and SHA-1 checksum for previous file. (c2efad983dfe50e6d8007257bad2c76604be389a and gnupg-w32cli-1.4.9.exe ) when I did the assignment, I skipped this step.
3rd step: http://www.glump.net/dokuwiki/gpg/gpg_intro is a link to an introduction to gpg and explains how to use it, and guides one through an example.
also I found http://www.c3scripts.com/tutorials/msdos/ to be somewhat helpful since I didn't know how to work my way in a command window...
Hope this helps somebody.
(5/17/08) Homework 6 is now available.
(5/4/08) Remember that our midterm is scheduled for this Friday, May 9. It's open books, open notes, calculators, whatever. Just no laptops or classmates. You can even bring other books on cryptography if you like. The exam will cover everything that we've done so far, and the intention is for it to be fun and interesting, not stressful. If you've been understanding the lectures and aren't having too much trouble on the homework assignments, you should be fine.
Here's a list of topics, off the top of my head, that you should know about. Basically, if these terms make sense to you you shouldn't have to actually study for the midterm: classical cryptosystems (monoalphabetic, shift/affine ciphers, hill, one-time pads, vigenere, playfair, adfgx), various attacks on all of these, linear recurrence relations mod 2, pseudo-random bit generation and Blum-Blum-Shub, number theory (modular arithmetic, euclidean algorithm, chinese remainder theorem, inverting matrices mod n, euler-fermat theorem, repeated squaring, primitive roots), 3-pass protocol and diffie-hellman key exchange, basics of hash functions, probability theory (sample spaces, conditional probabilities and bayes' theorem, random variables, birthday paradox).
I haven't been following the book super closely, and we've jumped around a bit, but these are the corresponding page numbers for most of this material: 1-49, 63-87, 210-212, 218-223, 229-231, 325-327.
Also, this week's homework assignment is posted on the homework page. Be sure to follow the directions!
(4/28/08) Homework 4 is now available. It's a short assignment this week. Also, in case I forget to mention this, there is no class on Friday May 16. That's Sun God, and nobody wants to think about math on Sun God.
(4/19/08) Homework 3 is now available.
(4/13/08) Homework 2 is now available.
(4/5/08) Lecture 3 is up. Available as .pdf or a zip of the .key file.
Also, the first homework assignment has been posted.
(4/3/08) I've posted the slides from the first two lectures. You can download them as a .pdf or, if you happen to have keynote, you can get a zip of the .key file
(4/2/08) Section is cancelled this week. Instead, please read sections 3.1-3.5 in the text.
people you should know
Professor
John Farina - jfarina@math.ucsd.edu
Office: AP&M 6101
Office Hours: Wednesday 1-3pm, and by appointment.
Teaching Assistants
Neal Harris - rnharris@math.ucsd.edu (A01, A02)
Office: AP&M 6341
Office Hours: Thursday 12-2pm.
Tom Petrillo - tpetrill@math.ucsd.edu (A03)
Office: AP&M 5132
Office Hours: Friday 1-2pm.
Times you should know
Lectures
MWF 4:00p - 4:50pSOLIS 107
Discussion Sections
A01 Th 5:00p - 5:50pWLH 2115A02 Th 6:00p - 6:50pWLH 2115
A03 Th 7:00p - 7:50pWLH 2115
Exams
There will be one midterm exam scheduled during lecture, which I have't scheduled yet. The final exam is on Thursday June 12, from 3:00pm - 6:00pm.
All exams are cumulative (this is math, after all). Exams are open book, open notes, calculators, (but no laptops).
General Tips
If you are not in the hospital, incarcerated, or otherwise indisposed, it is highly recommended that you attend lectures whenever possible. You will stand a much better chance of doing well in the class by doing so. Of course, attendance is no guarantee of success, but it is, by and large, a prerequisite. The same can be said of discussion sections. Your TA is a very valuable resource which you should certainly take advantage of. He is here to help you understand the material, answer your questions, and otherwise make your experience in Math 187 less painful, and I encourage you to bug him as often as possible.
Disclaimer: Although Professor Farina will try to keep this webpage as up to date and accurate as possible, don't assume that everything contained herein is correct. Remember, you can't always trust everything you read on the internet. If you're still reading, this is a neat song you can download and listen to. It's from the soundtrack to one of my favorite movies, and it goes very well with a bit of the old math homework. Also wine, (assuming you're of age, of course).