Talk:Math 485: Mathematical Cryptography

Maple and Mathematica do better than Matlab at doing arithmetic with large integers. I have had students encounter problems with rounding using Matlab, making implementing RSA difficult; perhaps the learning outcomes should not treat all three software packages equally. -pmj5

If the course focuses on the mathematics behind cryptography, would "Mathematical Cryptography" be a better course title than "Introduction to Cryptography"? -pmj5

The Math 371 prerequisite is a rather high barrier to entry. It concedes that we do not expect to have many non-math majors in this course. If, instead, the prerequisite was simply Math 343, this course could be a useful tool for recruiting students into the mathematics major or graduate program, by encouraging engineering/physics/etc. students to enroll. The material is almost certainly more likely to be interesting to the generic student than many of our other courses seem at first to non-mathematicians, because of its real-world applications, and we should take advantage of this to get more students enrolled in a mathematics course. We certainly shouldn't water down the material in an attempt to cater to students from other departments, but I believe that the course can be taught at a level that will both allow math majors to see connections between cryptography and other topics they have studied, and at the same time provide an opportunity for engineering/science students to be introduced to some beautiful mathematics. -pmj5