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Below is a rough schedule of how I expect this class to proceed and important dates.  You can expect to see this schedule revised as the course develops. You are expected to show up for lectures and be aware of any changes to the tentative schedule that I am providing for you here.

Lecture Schedule	Topics	Remarks
Tuesday, January 4	Introduction-Caesar, Vigenere
Thursday, January 6	classical ciphers- Rectangular transposition, homophonic, Playfair, ADFGVX, snail
Tuesday, January 11		Quiz 1
Thursday, January 13	classical ciphers- Hill, Vernam, probability theory
Tuesday, January 18	probability theory and the game of craps	return quiz 1
Thursday, January 20	disease paradox, more craps, Hill problem
Tuesday, January 25		Quiz 2
Thursday, January 27	three sticks, monkey words, index of coincidence
Tuesday February 1	Monty Hall, index of coincidence, test for monoalphabetic substitution, breaking Vigenere	return quiz 2
Thursday, February 3	\( F( \sum_i m_i x_i ) \leq \sum_i m_i F(x_i) \), breaking rectangular transposition
Tuesday February 8	breaking monoalphabetic substitution, breaking ADFGVX, Intro to entropy
Thursday, February 10		Quiz 3
Tuesday February 15	more on Entropy, unicity distance
Thursday, February 17	trees and codes
Tuesday February 22 and 24	reading week
Tuesday March 1		Quiz 4
Thursday, March 3	coins, trees, codes
Tuesday March 8	decision trees, expected code length, perfect secrecy
Thursday, March 10	perfect secrecy, Vernam, gcd
Tuesday March 15	number theory computations
Thursday, March 17		Quiz 5
Tuesday March 22	Diffie-Hellman, number theory computations, RSA
Thursday, March 24	digital signatures, RSA, using primitive roots to solve equations
Tuesday March 29	El Gamal, breaking RSA, Diffie-Helman (factoring, discrete log)
Thursday, March 31	DES, Feistel, knapsack

The grade for this course will be based on three components listed on the grades page.  The final grade will be curved and will not be based on the absolute system of reference.

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The following is a list of main topics that we covered from my schedule when I taught the class last year. You can expect that we follow this list in roughly the same order.

Introduction
Classical ciphers
     Caesar
     Vigenere
     Rectangular transposition
     homophonic
     Playfair
     Hill
     Vernam
     ADFGVX
     snail
     Morse code
probability theory
the game of craps
infinite monkeys
probability and vigenere
probability and rectangular transposition
index of coincidence
breaking monoalphabetic substitution
Introduction to entropy
Entropy
unicity distance
trees and file compression
number theory
gcd
solving ax=b (mod n)
computing a^b (mod n)
Euler-Fermat theorem
RSA
primality testing
factorization
discrete log
Diffie-Hellman
Knapsack
DES
Feistel cyphers