Section 2.3

Difficult: I had a bit of a difficult time undersanding the language used to describe UFDs. It didn't help that there were no proofs of the two theorems. I was able to get it in the end, but it was a little harder.

Reflective: Once again this was mostly review for me, the Lemma 2.3.3, about perfect nth powers was new to me, and without any examples of how this is used I am not quite sure its purpose, but i am sure that will come up more later.

Section 2.1 - 2.2

Difficult: For me the hardest part of the section was the proof that showing well ordered property and induction were equivalent. I had a slightly hard time following the proof the entire way through.

Reflective: For the most part this material is stuff that I still freshly remember from abstract algebra. It was interesting to see lemmas written slightly different then I have seen them in the past, such as that (a, b)*[a, b] = a*b. I guess I knew this since I knew [a, b] = a * b / (a, b), but I had just never seen it written in that form.

Introduction

I am currently a first year masters student, and will graduate April 2013. I plan to continue with a PhD in computer science after I graduate.

I have taken Linear Algebra, Multivariate calculus, Cryptography, and abstract algebra since calculus.

I am taking this class since much of the research in cryptography has a basis in number theory. I want to prepare myself so that I could do my PhD in cryptography.

What has made math classes the best for me is when they involve application to real problems using software such as Mathematica or Maple.

Unique about myself is that I speak fluent Chinese and am starting to learn Russian.