Summer
The major goal for the summer will be to learn about a research problem that we can solve computationally over the fall. To do this, we will have to learn enough math to appreciate the relevant research questions, and we will also get some experience with computational aspects.
We will meet regularly, but informally, perhaps as often as each morning. This is not a class! In our meetings, we will discuss some concepts in number theory. After the meetings, you will perform experiments with these concepts, some of these experiments on computers. And this will feed into our regular meetings, where we will share the results of our experiments, conjectures, wild guesses about the way numbers behave, etc. We realize that not everyone will be able to attend every meeting, and we have contingency plans for this. But please talk to us if you think this will be a problem.
Another activity that may be of interest is an informal special interest group on proofs. This group will meet weekly, say Thursday afternoons, and discuss ways that we can think about proofs, discover proofs, and write down proofs. We will follow Velleman's book How to Prove It. This group will be open to anybody with an interest in proofs, and is not officially part of the cohort. But it may be interesting to some of you.
Fall
In the fall, cohort members should enroll in the following two courses:
- COSC 4010-02, Distributed Computing for Cryptographic Applications, MWF 1:10-2:00
- MATH 4800-02, Foundations of Cryptography, TR 2:45-4:05
The meeting times for these courses are not currently set in stone. We are soliciting feedback on the times, and we will calcify them by the end of March.
In addition, the cohort will engage in the research activity that comes out of the summer program. This will take the form of a computational experiment.
Spring
During the spring, we will present our results at one of the regional math conferences. This will be an exciting time, the culmination of the cohort's research project!