Recent Announcements:

• 4 May I have finally posted notes for the last two weeks of lectures in the course, so the website now reflects the entire course.

• 14 Apr. Raphael Ryger will give a guest lecture in class Thursday. Here are two papers that it might be useful to glance at in preparation for his talk:

  • Yehuda Lindell and Benny Pinkas, Privacy Preserving Data Mining (PDF), J. Cryptology (2002) 15: 177-206.
  • Raphael S. Ryger, Onur Kardes, and Rebecca N. Wright, On the Lindell-Pinkas Secure Computation of Logarithms: From Theory to Practice (PDF), presented at the International Workshop on Practical Privacy-Preserving Data Mining, April 26, 2008.

  Of particular interest for his talk is the "x ln x" protocol in section 6 of the Lindell-Pinkas paper.

• 8 Apr. Problem set 3 (.pdf) is available. It is due in class on Thursday, April 16.

• 8 Apr. Schedule of in-class student presentations:

  Date	3:45	4:10	4:35
  4/21	Donya	Xueyuan	Michael
  4/23	Kamil	Christian	Michelle

• 31 Mar. We will use the last week of the term (April 21 and 23) for student presentations. Each of you will be assigned a 25 minute time slot to make a presentation on the topic of your term project. The talk does not have to reflect the finished project (which isn't due until May 4). Rather, it should introduce the topic of the project by presenting background material that will help one understand the final paper. It may also present preliminary results or ideas that are still being developed. This is a good opportunity to get feedback on your project early enough to be useful for improving the final paper.

• 5 Mar. I've posted the Term Project Assignment. A one-page project proposal is due on Thursday, April 2. The final project report is due on the last day of Reading Period, Monday, May 4.

• 4 Mar. I've posted notes in advance for tomorrow's lecture on voting systems that will serve as a prelude to Ron Rivest's Perlis Lecture. We will meet in room 500 as usual at 3:45, talk briefly about the voting problem, and then move downstairs to room 200 for his talk. Please read the notes before class, if possible, so that we can start right off with a discussion of some of the issues.

• 2 Mar. I've posted notes for last Thursday's lecture, so the lecture notes are now up to date.

• 1 Mar. Yitong Yin has prepared solutions to PS1 and PS2. Links to them can be found on the handouts page. Yitong mentions that nobody correctly solved the first problem of PS2. Please read the solution and then ask for help if you still don't understand it.

• 22 Feb. As I discover errors in the lecture notes, I make corrections, increment the "Revision" number, and upload the corrected version to the web site. At the present time, lectures 1 and 3 are at revision 3, lectures 4 and 9 are at revision 2, and the others are as originally posted.

• 19 Feb. Problem set 2 (.pdf) is available. It is due in class on Thursday, February 26.

• 12 Feb. Upcoming schedule:

  1. Tuesday, March 3: Hour exam at regular class time and place.

  2. Thursday, March 5: Rivest talk. We will meet as usual in AKW 500 for 15 minutes, then move to AKW 200 at 4 pm for Ron Rivest's Perlis Distinguished Lecture on Security of Voting Systems.

• 9 Feb. Two announcements:

  1. Problem set 1 (.pdf) is available. It is due in class on Thursday, February 19.

  2. The initial TA office hours will be Tuesday 2:30-3:45 pm and Wednesday 3:30-4:30 pm. These can be changed as we find out what works for people. Also, Yitong is normally in his office from Tuesday to Thursday and is happy to have people drop in outside of his regular office hours. You may also request help by email from either Yitong or me.

• 20 Jan. I am changing the meeting time of this class to TTh 3:45-5:00 pm in order to avoid a conflict with CPSC 365b. We will meet today at the new time in the usual room, AKW 200. Beginning Thursday, we will meet in AKW 500.

• 15 Jan. I want to draw your attention to the new Lecture Notes page, which contains links to notes for the first lecture. Comments and corrections to the lecture notes are always welcome.

• 13 Jan. Welcome to the CPSC 461b website!