Arkadii Slinko – författare

Designed for an undergraduate lecture course, this textbook provides all of the background in arithmetic, polynomials, groups, fields, and elliptic curves that is required to understand real-life applications such as cryptography, secret sharing, error-correcting, fingerprinting, and compression of information. It explains in detail how these applications really work. The book uses the free GAP computational package, allowing the reader to develop intuition about computationallyhard problems and giving insights into how computational complexity can be used to protect the integrity of data.

The first undergraduate textbook to cover such a wide range of applications, including some recent developments, this second edition has been thoroughly revised with the addition of new topics and exercises. Based on a one semester lecture course given to third year undergraduates, it is primarily intended for use as a textbook, while numerous worked examples and solved exercises also make it suitable for self-study.

This textbook provides mathematical tools and applies them to study key aspects of data transmission such as encryption and compression. Modern societies are awash with data that needs to be manipulated in many ways: encrypted, compressed, shared between users in a prescribed manner, protected from unauthorized access, and transmitted over unreliable channels. All of these operations are based on algebra and number theory. This textbook covers background topics in arithmetic, polynomials, groups, fields, and elliptic curves required for real-life applications like cryptography, secret sharing, error-correcting, fingerprinting, and compression of information.

The book illustrates the work of these applications using the free GAP computational package. It uses this package to help readers understand computationally hard problems and provide insights into protecting data integrity. This textbook covers a wide range of applications including recent developments, primarily intended for use as a textbook, with numerous worked examples and solved exercises suitable for self-study.

This edition has been thoroughly revised with new topics and exercises, introducing hash functions for properly describing digital signatures, blockchains, and digital currencies in the latest version.