Robert Low's 2008-2009 Courses
- 124ms -- a first year course introducing discrete mathematics. Mostly sets, logic and functions. Module guide, OHP slides and related material available to students on the course via CUonline.
- 225ms -- a second year course on differential equations. I will be covering the first half of this, comprising on some qualitative theory of differential with a brief introduction to bifurcations. Module guide, OHP slides and related material available to students on the course via CUonline.
- 224ms -- a second year course on discrete mathematics, covering graph theory and abstract algebra. I am teaching the second half, on abstract algebra and its applications. This will cover some number theory, groups theory, and an introduction to finite fields, and give applications from areas such as cryptography, error correcting codes, and combinatorics. Module guide and OHPS are available to students on the course via CUonline.
- 324ms -- a final year course on error correcting codes and cryptography. In the first half of this course we look at error-correcting codes, concentrating on linear codes over Z2. In the second half we look at various aspects of cryptography, including the standard cryptosystems DES and AES, and those aspects of public key cryptography that rely on number theory. We also take a brief look at more advanced topics such as elliptic curve and quantum cryptography.
- 382ms -- final year project. I will be supervising two final year projects this year, one on computational number theory (primality testing and factorising, with application to cryptography in mind) and one on orbital mechanics, concentrating on the precession of the perihelion of planetary orbits.
