I'm starting in on the last class needed to complete my master's program.  As luck would have it, I've been able to substitute grad-level cryptology for what ought to have been a graduate course in analysis or statistics.  Analysis in this case means proving things like calculus and trigonometry actually work, and statistics means proving things like central limit theorem.  Analysis was interesting but not especially relevant to my professional life when I took it at the 400 level, and I've had statistics a dozen ways from Sunday as part of discrete math, physics, and data mining courses.  Neither was terribly enticing.

Cryptology, on the other hand, is everything I've ever wanted from mathematics.  Crypto is where pure math becomes something physical, tangible, and powerful.  Many great mathematicians of the past lived and died, spending their entire careers studying and proving what would one day be the theoretical underpinnings of modern cryptology, many of whom never saw any of their work have a single practical application.  Now it's at the base of nearly every electronic communication in one form or another, and without it much of our modern world of e-commerce, email, chat, and ATMs would be impossible.
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Posted by: leoncaruthers at 08:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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