Cryptologic Tidbits

Cryptology offers an ideal setting to give students a powerful and successful experience in mathematics. Cryptologic examples allow students to connect new content with prior knowledge, and provide students the opportunity for productive struggle with challenging material. Cryptologic contexts offer students multiple entry points to rich questions and provide all students an opportunity to engage with the material, to propose unique problem solving strategies, and to build upon the ideas and conjectures of their peers. Cryptologic applications allow students to take ownership of their problem solving strategies and increase their confidence as learners. Oh yeah...cryptology is fun!

In addition to providing some justification for the above claims, I will present a variety of examples from cryptology that could easily find their way into existing courses in probability, statistics, quantitative reasoning, linear algebra, and abstract algebra.