ACCESS-UGS 1430
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 College of Science Math Department Nick Korevaar's home page |
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Tuesday, June 12, 2007
You can solve any monoalphabetic substitution cipher by hand of course,
but technology
can help too. And since part of the point
of our current work is to make sure we're comfortable using
technology at the U, we
have a good excuse to play with it now.
While you're waiting, try the code atCaesar shift code. (If it's working today.)
Stage 1
First, let's do an example together. If you're using Mozilla (not Explorer), go toNow, open Maple 8 (not Maple 10) from the class software directory. Then, use the "open URL" option from Maple menu and paste in the URL of substitution.mws, and you should be able to open this file in Maple.
It will help to also open a new internet window with the letter frequency table.
Let's also cut and paste the CIPHER text into a Word document, make a duplicate copy of the file (so we can make mistakes) and use the Find & Replace feature of Word to convert to plain text. Remember to tell Word to match the case of the letters it is replacing.
Emina Alibegovic, a recent Utah Math Ph.D., assisted during this week of ACCESS several years ago, and found an essay you might find interesting. It's been chopped into eight parts and encrypted using who knows what substitution cipher. According to your group number, download the section of the essay into Word and start deciphering! Your group should recreate the plain text, and as well, create the encryption key. Print out a hard copy of your work. If you have time, notice the encryption key uses a keyword.....use the internet to figure out find out something about the person whose name this keyword is.
Stage 3
After all your hard work, let's read our results out loud to the class to hear the whole story.
If this story is indeed interesting to you and you
would like to find out more on women in Mathematics,
please visit the Women in Math Project,
maintained by Professor Marie Vitulli of the University of Oregon.
This is the most comprehensive site on the subject. (Thanks to
Emily Putnam,
who helped ACCESS two years ago, for this link.)