Re: What math class to take to catch up on Modulus and DLP?
From: M.S. Bob (msbob_at_hotmail.com-edy)
Date: 09/08/03
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Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 00:04:21 -0300
On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 01:38:14 GMT, Tom St Denis <tomstdenis@iahu.ca>
wrote:
>M.S. Bob wrote:
>| On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 22:33:22 GMT, Tom St Denis <tomstdenis@iahu.ca>
>| wrote:
>|
>|>Says who? I'm a high school grad with a lot of time on my hand. While
>|>I'm certainly no pro I think I can safely say I at least am familiar
>|>with the field.
>|>
>|>If you just pick up a few books, read them, toy with the math [e.g. do
>|>the exercises] you'll be able to talk shop too :-)
>|
>|
>| Tom,
>|
>| No offense, but you still do lack a fair bit of mathematical maturity.
>
>Very true but I never assumed that position either. I think I've made
>it rather clear that I'm a newbie in the field and if you understood
>differently you should really spend more time reading what I write :-)
I do love how you fall back to this defense when someone calls your
bluff. "I'm a newbie" -- yet you claimed "safely say I at least am
familiar with the field." -- make up your mind.
>| Though you come a long way from your first young-and-full-of-it
>| postings in I believe it was 1997, and that is a good thing
>| considering how rude, ignorant, and just plain wrong you were on many
>| occasions over the years and various flame wars.
>
>Normally flame wars arise from a breakdown in communication. When for
>instance Douglas Gwyn and I were debating the "extra rounds" position in
>cipher design he failed to cite any references to back up his point. He
>simply posted "you're wrong I'm right. neeter neeter neeter!". Which
>resulted in a flame war.
>
>I don't mind being corrected. What bothers the heck out of me is the
<http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=g:thl417899203d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=9190te%24gu3%241%40nnrp1.deja.com>
Matt Timmermans had corrected your misunderstanding regarding a job
ad, and various fields of mathematics, in a civil manner, yet you go
into a spelling/word usage flamewar. When Joe Peschel tries to correct
you, you blow him off with an "whatever".
<http://groups.google.ca/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=91gr7v%24jju%241%40nnrp1.deja.com>
In other cases you have also been known to simply resort to
profanities when someone does correct you. So frankly you do seem to
strongly mind being corrected.
>Also often in my own defense I'm only offering what I happen to know as
>I understand it. If more knowledgeable people would kick in some
>information things would improve.
Yes, those stupid professors, mathematics, and cryptographers like Bob
Silverman, Douglas Gwyn, David Wagner, Greg Rose, Brian Gladman, etc.
who all horde their information, and never try to inject knowledge or
understanding in sci.crypt. Hell, they never even try to correct your
factual mistakes or your misunderstandings. Thank you St Denis, you
are our saviour.
Get serious, I think you can credit yourself with fanning the flames
and prolonging more than one flamewar, and perhaps making it just too
tedious for those who do not have the time to sit around waiting to
correct your usenet postings. To be fair and clear, you are by far not
the only one that engages in flaming.
>Agreed. However, there is nothing wrong with the self-taught method.
>You just have to have more patience and tolerance than I've managed to
>muster. I mean for the most part a university class consists of 16
>weeks of lectures from a textbook, two or three exams, a few labs and
>maybe a project at the end.
Nothing is wrong with being self-taught, it is a very hard way to
learn in that a) it tends not be well rounded, b) it is hard to
develop debating or writing skills just by using books, c) books don't
provide postitive reinforcement, and d) they are terrible at guilting
you or making due dates to force you to keep motivated when you don't
feel motivated.
University education depends little on the classroom, and the
instructor, but largely on the individual student. Save for a rare few
terrible professors, you get out it what you put in. Good professors
make it easier to be inspired, and help keep students motivated.
>All of which you could accomplish on your own with a public library,
>initiative, self-motivated projects and patience.
Most public libraries I've been to do not include an entire department
of math PhDs and TAs that you can freely ask questions. Perhaps I was
spoiled by my university education, but I had virutally unlimited
access to the entire department. The only cost* to asking questions
was that I had to attempt to figure out the answer myself -- with a
few hints along the way.
* beyond the obvious tution fees
>Also that being said I can name several worthwhile contributors to the
>field of cryptography who aren't university graduates or at least not
>MsC or PhDs. This snotty attitude that you have to be an academic
>genius to accomplish anything is really a pain which is fortunately not
>shared by many people in academia.
I stand by my statement, "to have a deep understanding of current
research and contibute towards new research, you need an advanced
knowledge of mathematics." Please show me anyone without a solid
knowledge of advanced mathematics that can provide useful and correct
insight about Bernstein's Circuits for integer factorization proposal.
I don't care if you have an advanced degree or not, but without the
_knowledge_, you are fooling yourself if you think you can push the
envelope of the state-of-the-art. And the best way to quickly reach
that point is to have a graduate degree in a related field, like a
MMath in Pure Maths or C&O.
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