Sec. 2.1-2.2, 2.4, Due Sept 11th

1. The most difficult thing for me was just working out the modular arithmetic to crack all the ciphers. It wasn't hard to understand, I mean I understand it, but it just took some remembering and a little bit of arithmetic to solve them. Very interesting though! They keep coming up with stuff that I never would've thought of! The other thing that I would've liked to have seen an example of was #4 on pg 16. So maybe we can do an example of that tomorrow or something :)
2. I thought all 3 of these sections were really cool! I love learning this stuff! It's like I actually enjoy reading this book.. crazy huh? :) I thought the shift ciphers were clever, and the affine ciphers were cool as well, just took a little more busy work with numbers. It was fun writing out the alphabet like it said to do, and then count the numbers and fill in the blanks for alpha and beta, and just work it all out. I also like the substitution cipher. That's what we've been dealing with mostly in class so far, and I like them a lot. I always do the frequency count, as well as if there are spaces, look at the smaller words and start from there. Using that chart and eliminating possibilites was cool. I liked that we were given the charts this time, cause I think it might take a little while to make those ourselves, but if you really needed to crack a code, it's not that bad! They were really fun chapters to read, and it was cool to see how math was related to the cryptography! (Now when some kid asks what modular arithmetic is good for in your next 371 class, you can tell him some cool stuff!)