MATH220-21S1 (C) Semester One 2021

Discrete Mathematics and Cryptography

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 22 February 2021
End Date: Sunday, 27 June 2021
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 7 March 2021
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 14 May 2021

Description

Discrete mathematics underpins many areas of modern-day science. This course is an introduction to graph theory and cryptography, two central topics in discrete mathematics.

Discrete mathematics underpins many areas of modern-day science. This course is an introduction to graph theory and cryptography, two central topics in discrete mathematics, each having fundamental links to many branches of science. Graph theory underlies the solution to many problems in a variety of disciplines including operations research and computational biology. Cryptography has applications to all communications security, from state security to online banking and mobile phone conversations. This course is designed for mathematics and computer science students.

Topics covered:

Cryptography: Basic ideas and terminology of cryptography. Shift and affine ciphers. One-time pads. Basic properties of the integers. Euclid’s algorithm. Modular arithmetic. Public key ciphers. The RSA, Rabin and ElGamal ciphers. Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Arithmetic of polynomials over finite fields. Constructing finite fields. Linear and non-linear shift registers.

Graph theory: Concepts and terminology of graphs. Eulerian and Hamiltonian graphs. Complexity, polynomial-time and exponential-time algorithms. Chromatic polynomials. Matchings and Hall’s Marriage Theorem. The Greedy Algorithm. Directed graphs. Network flows.

Learning Outcomes

  • At the end of the course, students will:

  • Be familiar with  some of the old and modern cryptographic schemes and have developed the necessary mathematics to understand and analyse them.
  • Be familiar with some of the basic techniques of decipherment.
  • Have an understanding the field of graph theory with an emphasis on graph algorithms and proof techniques.

Prerequisites

Restrictions

MATH221, MATH231

Course Coordinator / Lecturer

Charles Semple

Lecturer

Jeanette McLeod

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Assignments 25%
Test 25%
Final Examination 50%


To obtain a passing grade in this course you must pass the course as a whole (which requires an overall mark of 50% or more) and score at least 40% in the final exam.

Textbooks / Resources

There is no set text for the course. But there are several books that are recommended reading:
1. Buchmann, Introduction to Cryptography (2nd Edition)
2. Clark and Holton, A First Look at Graph Theory

Copies of these books will be on reserve in the Engineering and Physical Sciences Library. Also, there are a number of other good books on cryptography and graph theory in the library.

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $788.00

International fee $4,438.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Mathematics and Statistics .

All MATH220 Occurrences

  • MATH220-21S1 (C) Semester One 2021
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