I didn't see the new reading assignments before I left campus Friday afternoon, and I'm still trying to get the internet set up at my apartment.
How long have you spent on the homework assignments? Did lecture and the reading prepare you for them?
I usually spend about three to four hours on the homework assignments. The lecture and reading prepare me fairly well, though there have been a couple questions that we discussed the theory behind, but then I wasn't sure how to actually apply it, particularly the question on the most recent homework about finding two plaintexts that encrypted to the same ciphertext. I knew that the reason there would be problems was that the determinant of the matrix was 2, which is not coprime to 26 like it needs to be so the matrix could be inverted mod 26, but I wasn't sure how to go about finding two plaintexts that went to the same ciphertext, so I ended up kind of doing a guess and check sort of thing.
What has contributed most to your learning in this class thus far?
I think the homework has probably contributed most to my learning so far--it helps a lot to try to work problems out for myself, and I think the problems where we're decrypting an actual message are fun.
What do you think would help you learn more effectively or make the class better for you?
I really don't like that the blogs are due at midnight the night before class. If I do the reading too far in advance, I start forgetting some of the details, and I have to do it on campus or at a friend's apartment, so I'm usually either several days early or a little late, and I'd much rather do it in the gap I have between my 9:00 class and cryptography at 1:00, because then it's still fresh in my mind.
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