[Cryptography] State of sin (was Re: What to put in a new cryptography course)

[Tom Mitchell]

On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Arnold Reinhold <agr at me.com> wrote:

>
> > On Jul 20, 2016, at 3:14 PM, Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> wrote:
> > On Jul 15, 2016, at 4:58 PM, Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> wrote:
> >
> >> 2.  SEC(A) is true but nonetheless no proof exists.  (Godel sentences
> are not necessarily the only unprovable truths.)
> >
> > It turns out that there is reason to believe that this is in fact the
> case.
>
.....

>
> Another interesting article by Scott Aaronson, thank you, but like P vs.
> NP
>


The P vs. NP discussion should also live in the context of algorithms.

See:
Programming Pearls  --  Book by Jon Bentley

He has a number of examples where the algorithm and tool
have large impact on problem solving efficiency.

A graduate level question might ask if  P and NP apply to the problem
or to the chosen algorithm.

One might wonder if a code was anagram based.
See the example on "Finding Anagrams from a Dictionary"

A chink in a crypto system can collapse the assumptions
behind the notion of hard vs. easy to decrypt.

Should someone have an "Aha" moment, what was once hard
could become easy to trivial.  "Aha" see how much simpler the math is
when the Sun is used as the center of the solar system!" might be
one possible example where a historic perspective is shown to be less
than ideal for the math.





-- 
  T o m    M i t c h e l l
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