ACCESS-Math Tuesday June 17, 2003

ACCESS-UGS 1430
Math Portion
Summer 2003

College of Science
Math Department
Nick Korevaar's home page

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Nick Korevaar
Emily Putnam
Nancy Sundell
Maria Bell
Erika Roner
Sid Rudolph
Irene Cervantes

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

After that wonderful introduction to Caesar shifts and general substitution ciphers, let's put our new knowledge to work.

Stage 1

First, let's do an example together. Download and open the Maple file,

Substitution.mws.

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.

Stage 2

I've taken an essay you might find interesting and chopped it up into seven parts. Each piece is encrypted using who knows what sort of substitution. According to your group number, download the section of the essay into Word and start deciphering!

Stage 3

After all our hard work, let's read our results outloud 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.