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General Math Study Advice

Course Notes

Books and Stories

  • Official Text: Introduction to Cryptography with Coding Theory, 2nd Edition, Wade Trappe, Lawrence C. Washington.
  • The Code Book: A popular history of cryptography, by Simon Singh.
  • David Kohel's Cryptography: A free online text with Sage. Appendices A and B are particularly useful (intro to Sage for crypto).
  • Elementary Number Theory: Primes, Congruences, and SecretsAn excellent place to look up Sage commands in situ with number theory and cryptography topics.
  • Cryptography Stories: Some of the classics.
  • Further Reading: There are always more books.
    • History: The Codebreakers D. Kahn.
    • Mathematical cryptography: Cryptography, Theory and Practice D. Stinson; An Introduction to Mathematical Cryptography, J. Hoffstein, J. Pipher and J. Silverman; A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography, N. Koblitz; Algebraic Aspects of Cryptography, N. Koblitz.
    • Coding: A First Course in Coding Theory R. Hill; Elements of Algebraic Coding Theory, L. Vermani; Introduction to Coding THeory, J. H. van Lint
    • Number Theory: A Friendly Introduction to Number Theory J. Silverman; The Theory of Numbers, G. H. Hardy and E. M. Wright.
    • Algebra: A First Course in Abstract Algebra, J. Fraleigh; Abstract Algebra D. S. Dummit and R. M. Foote; Topics in Algebra, I. Herstein; Basic Algebra, I., II., N. Jacobson.
  • Reading about Bitcoin: A particularly nice account of Bitcoin can be found by Michael Nielson.

Cryptography Resources

General Math Resources

  • Dr. Math - Question answer service (by 'Math Doctors'). Use the search box first; there's a 99% chance someone has asked your question before.
  • Mathematics at StackExchange - Question answer service (by the 'hive mind'). Use the search box first; there's a 98% chance someone has asked your question before.
  • Math Forum Digital Library - Catalogue of web resources.

CU Resources

  • The Undergraduate Mathematics Resource Center is in Math 175 (first floor of math building), and is open M-Th 9-5 and F 9-2. Although tutors no longer serve this course, an area has been set up where you can meet your peers to work together.
  • A tutor list is available.