1.1-1.2 and 3.1, due on September 1

Difficult: I find it difficult to comprehend how a code would be "unbreakable", as mentioned in section 1.2.3. It would seem that, given enough time, any code would be breakable, just like even extinct languages can sometimes be translated with much effort. I'm disappointed that the book says we will not be looking even a little more into the one-time pad system.

I'm familiar with all of the theorems in section 3.1 except for the Prime Number Theorem. I'm not sure how useful this theorem is (though it seems interesting). It seems that we only use it once here though, to get the approximate number of primes with 100 digits, so maybe a better understanding of this is not important enough for me to look it up?

Reflective: I was expecting mainly computation Linear Algebra to be important in this class, but here right at the start we are using Abstract Algebra, a little ring theory. This caught my interest and makes me even more excited to be in this class. I love to see pure subjects used for "real" tasks like this. It helps me to make connections and remember the concepts I learned in the classes. Also, the first chapter, with history and motivation for studying cryptography, actually had me reading parts out loud to my wife. For example, the story of the Sahara outpost in WWII and the different types of attacks on cryptosystems.