cuneiform fragment

Making and Breaking Codes

LIGN17, Section ID: 520216, Section A00, Term: WI05
MW
5:00pm - 6:20pm Room: CENTR 216

Instructor: Chris Barker [barker@ucsd.edu], McGill 5135, Office hours: Tue 3-4, Wed 2-3
TA: Henry Beecher [hbeecher@ling.ucsd.edu], McGill 3324, Office hours: Tue 1-2 (or by appointment)
TA: Neal Peters [npeters@ling.ucsd.edu], McGill 3318, Office hours: by appointment

Class web site, start here: http://webct.ucsd.edu

Course description: A rigorous analysis of symbolic systems and their interpretations. Students will learn to encode and decode information using progressively more sophisticated methods; topics covered include ancient and modern phonetic writing systems, hieroglyphics, computer languages, and ciphers (secret codes).

Fulfills Requirements: This lower-division course has no prerequisites. It satisfies formal skills requirements in the Human Development Program. It also satisfies the formal skills requirement for Marshall college (math, statistics and logic), a quantitative/formal skills requirement for Roosevelt, and the formal skills requirement in Warren college.

Level: This is a lower-division course. It does not presume familiarity with any field of knowledge. In particular, you do not need to know any linguistics, number theory, or statistics in advance. However, bear in mind that this course satisfies a number of formal skills requirements. It will involve a lot of problem solving, and some unusual arithmetic (including a careful explanation of modular multiplication)--expect it to be challenging (but fun!).

There are two relatively inexpensive required texts:

1. The Code Book by Simon Singh, Anchor Press, around $12.00. There are several editions; the best one is the tan paperback with the words "The Code Book" across the front, like this: Amazon's page.

2. Information: The New Language of Science by Hans Christian Von Baeyer. Currently there is only a hardback available, but it only costs $20 or so. Amazon's page.

 

Warning: the content of the course is NOT closely based on either of these texts, so you cannot expect to cut class, read the texts, and still do well.

Work and grading: You are required to attend lecture. There will be homework assignments. In order to help you make sure you understand the homework assignments, there will be on-line quizzes on the class website, roughly one per week; there may also be unannounced in-class quizzes. Course performance will be calculated as follows: homework record (with any in-class quizzes) (15%), one midterm (35%), and the final (50%).

Web: This course makes heavy use of WebCT. On this site you will find information about the course (including this syllabus), extensive course materials not available in the textbook, information about the homework assignments, problems and tips for doing the homeworks, and other crucial information. Therefore you must check the main web page often for announcements and other information. Therefore you must have an official student account; the only way I know to get one is to be officially registered for the course. It is your responsibility to get yourself registered and to get the relevant ACS password working. If you don't have normal access to the class web site before the end of the first week, you won't be able to complete the homework quizzes, and your final grade may suffer.

Email: You are always welcome to email me and the TAs. I strongly encourage you to send questions about the content of the course to all three of us at the same time; this will vastly increase the speed (and often the quality) of the response. Missing class: if it is neccessary for you to miss class, it is your responsibility to make arrangements with another student in the class to find out what was covered and what you need to know. Cell phones: Cell phones should remain silent. If one goes off accidentally, please turn it off as soon as possible.

Cheating: Cheating is immoral and wrong and will not be tolerated. Working together to find the answer is fine, but talking to someone who has already figured out the answer is not ok. You must do your homework by yourself: in particular, you must complete the on-line quizzes alone, by yourself, without help, without printouts or other written aids beyond what is provided by me or the TAs. You must not allow anyone to help you during the midterms or the final. In addition, it is also immoral to allow someone else to benefit from your knowledge in a test situation (e.g., don't permit anyone else to copy from your scantron). Out of respect for the honest majority, we will take steps to make it more difficult to cheat. We will assume that you are honest, but if we are confronted with clear evidence of cheating, it is our duty to take action.

Picture ID: Please bring a picture ID to the midterms and the final so that we can make sure that no one is pretending to be you.

Rough schedule:

Nota Bene: There are UCSD holidays (no class) on Monday, January 17 (week 3); Monday, February 21 (week 7).

Week 1: What is a code? Examples, definitions.

Week 2: Symbols, Meanings, and Structure in codes: Hangul.

Week 3: Types vs. Tokens, Alphabets vs. Syllables, Sounds vs. Thoughts: Cuneiform vs. Hawaiian.

Week 4: Compression: Huffman coding.

Week 5: Information and randomness

Week 6: Protocols: Diffie/Hellman key exchange. MIDTERM: Monday, February 7 in class.

Week 7: Ciphers: RSA.

Week 8: Error detection and error correction.

Week 9: Translation and compiling: computer languages.

Week 10: The nature of meaning.

Final exam: Thursday, 17 March, 7:00 - 10:00 PM