Course Information

Logistics

Staff

Instructor: Alex Ozdemir (email on site). Office hours: TBD.

Communication

There are four communication channels:

• Ed (join link): This is for announcements and problem discussion, and is generally preferred.
• Gradescope (entry code 4DN8ZD): This is for homework submission, feedback, and grading.
• Email Alex (email here): This is for any private matters.
• Anonymous feedback form: For submitting anonymous feedback to me. I am very interested in feedback.

Lectures

Lectures are Monday and Wednesday 11am-12:15pm in Room 101 in the College of Computing building.

Attendance is strongly recommended. Lecture notes will be posted, but lectures are not recorded.

Homework

Homeworks include written problems and programming problems. You must use LaTeX to typeset your written solutions using the provided template.

Homework is due at 6pm on Friday, every two weeks, on Gradescope (see above). It will be posted about 2 weeks before it is due.

Textbook?

We follow no textbook, but Boneh & Shoup is a good (and free) general reference.

Policies

Grading

There are three components:

• Homeworks are 60% (approximately 10% each).
• The midterm is 15%.
• The final exam or project is 25%. (You can choose which to do.)

Collaboration Policy

Collaboration is encouraged! You may discuss the homeworks together and solve problems together, but you must write your solutions independently. If you collaborate, you must name your collaborators on the first page of your submission.

You may also ask questions about problems through Ed. If your question might spoil a problem, then ask it as a private question.

You may use the Boneh & Shoup textbook, or any other textbook as a reference. If you use a result from a textbook in the course of solving a problem, please cite the textbook in your solution.

AI Policy

You may not use AI to solve problems, write solutions, check them, or edit them. You may not input homework problems to AI for any reason. You may use AI to learn about course topics and cryptography in general—it is a great tool for this.

Reason: In a homework assignment, your goal is to think about the problems so that you learn. The goal is not to solve the problem as quickly as possible. If the AI does the thinking for you, you might solve the problem faster, but you learn less.

Similarly, you may not search the Internet for answers to problem-set problems.

If you have questions about these policies, just ask.

Late Policy

You get four “late days” this semester. You may use a late day to submit a problem set after the deadline via Gradescope. You may only use late days in one-day increments (no partial late days).

If you submit an assignment more than 96 hours after the deadline, or if you submit an assignment late after running out of late days, you will receive no credit for the submission.

Please submit your assignments on time and save your late days for extraordinary situations.

Special accommodations

If you are entitled to and special course accommodations by GT policy, please email me.