Questions, due September 30

1. How long have you spent on the homework assignments? Did lecture and the reading prepare you for them? I spend about an hour on each homework assignment, sometimes longer depending on the assignment. For the most part I feel as though lecture and reading prepares me for the homework. There have been a few questions that I had no idea what I was doing though.

2. What has contributed most to your learning in this class thus far? I really like that we have to do the reading before class. That way I know if I don't understand the reading I really need to pay attention in class so that I can understand it.

3. What do you think would help you learn more effectively or make the class better for you? (This can be feedback for me, or goals for yourself.) I need to try better to completely finish homework before class so that I can better pay attention in class.

3.11-3.11.2, due September 27

1. Difficult: The most difficult part for me is wrapping my head around what a field actually is. The rest of the math seemed pretty straight forward though.

2. Reflective: This reminded me of abstract algebra and using modular arithmetic with polynomials. It is something I am fairly good at and understand.

4.5-4.8, due September 25

1. Difficult: I had difficulty following all the modes of operation and how they all work. They all just seem so similar it is hard to keep them separated in my mind.

2. Reflective: It was interesting to read about the breaking of DES. The advances of technology make a difference in our lives. Sometimes it makes our lives easier but those that do cryptography it is harder to create a good system that is resistant to attacks with advancing technology.

4.1-4.2 and 4.4, due September 23

1. Difficult: I had difficulty just following the DES encryption in general. I don't understand where the L and R's are coming from and don't understand all the permutation charts.

2. Reflection: I don't think I've seen anything like this before. So it was interesting to read something new. I did however recognize the group theory at the end from abstract algebra.

2.9-2.11, due September 20

1. Difficult: The most difficult thing for me in the reading was understanding the linear feedback shift register. There were just so many congruences and I didn't know where different things were coming from.

2. Reflection: The section on pseudo-random bit generation had me thinking about how many times I used the function rand() in my computer science class. I didn't realize that it was really that predictable. The text said that it was and I was like wait a minute I thought it was actually a random number.

2.5-2.8 and 3.8, due September 18

1. Difficult: I had difficulty following how the ADFGX cipher works. I understood the original matrix but I got lost when the matrix starts getting arranged.

2. Reflective: I like how in this reading I am starting to see how Linear Algebra is actually important. I went through that class wondering when I would ever use the majority of the topics covered and now I am starting to see the important of inverses of matrices and determinants.

2.3, due on September 16

1. Difficult: I found it difficult to follow the decoding process once it started taking dot products. I then didn't follow very well what the dot product represented how it then becomes useful.

2. Reflective: It seems that pretty clear that frequency of letters are pretty important when it comes to decoding messages. We kinda used them when we decoded the message in class and on homeworks and now it is being used to crack the Vigenere Cipher.

2.1-2.2 and 2.4, due on September 13

1. Difficult: I didn't really understand how the counting diagram worked and how with the frequencies we can just guess the correct letters. It wasn't very clear how we got the table of numbers.

2. Reflective: Like the book figured out frequencies of numbers and used them to their advantage to crack the code I have done the same thing with the couple of codes that I have had to break in this class. I look and see what letters are repeated a lot and guess what the letters correspond to from there.

Guest Lecturer, due on September 11

1. Difficult: Nothing about the lecture was truly difficult. A question I had though was did it not bother people that codes were being sent back and forth and they couldn't read them? I feel as though somebody that didn't like the church would have tried to intercept them and gotten upset because they couldn't read the code.

2. Reflective: This lecture was really interesting just because I had no idea how much codes were actually used in the church. I learned something new about the Doctrine and Covenants that I didn't previously know about unusual names. It was overall a really interesting lecture.

3.2-3.3, due on September 9

1. Difficult: The most difficult part for me to understand was division in modular arithmetic. I've gotten really good at addition, subtraction, and multiplication but I have never really used division. There is just a lot more that goes into division than addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

2. Reflective: I have used a lot of modular arithmetic when I took computer science winter semester. We used it mainly when we had different choices and needed one at random. We would produce a random number and then mod it depending on how many choices there where. Modular arithmetic can make center things so much easier.

1.1-1.2 and 3.1, due on September 6

1. Difficult: The most difficult part of the text was when it started talking about the size of numbers and how log base 10 of n is important and that relates to k^2 somehow. I am having trouble understanding how all these things relate to each other in 1.1.3 on page 8.
2. Reflective: I enjoyed reading about the basic number theory. I feel like I have used all of what was read in multiple classes and have a good handle on that information. It made me excited that there is actually something that I know going into this class when I didn't think I knew anything pertaining to cryptography.

Introduction, due on September 6

• What is your year in school and major? I am a Junior double majoring with Math and Math Ed.
• Which post-calculus math courses have you taken? I have taken Math 341: Theory of Analysis 1, Math 371: Abstract Algebra 1, MathEd 362: Survey of Geometry
• Why are you taking this class? I am taking this class because it fulfills one of the multiple upper level classes needed to be taken for my math major.
• Do you have experience with Maple, Mathematica, Sage, or another computer algebra system? Programming experience? How comfortable are you with using one of these programs to complete homework assignments? I do not have any experience with Maple, Mathematica, Sage or any other computer algebra system. I have programming experience from taking CS 142 this past winter semester. I feel like I will become comfortable with one of those programs as soon as I sit down and start playing around with it and getting use to it.
• Tell me about the math professor or teacher you have had who was the most and/or least effective. What did s/he do that worked well/poorly. One of my favorite math professions gives us a list of objectives from each section that we study. They tend to be long lists but I know what he wants us to get out of each section. He then pulled test questions from the objectives since that was what he wanted to know. But because I had the objectives from the start I could follow and make sure I learned and understood each objective before it was a couple days before the test.
• Write something interesting about yourself. Something interesting about myself is how deeply invested into sports that I am. I love football and basketball. I am at every home game unless work prevents my going. 
• If you are unable to come to my scheduled office hours, what times would work for you? I tend to have work a lot of the times during your office hours but I would be able to almost always come Tuesday and Thursday 3-4 pm or Friday 10-12.