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Didn't you just spend a considerable bit of time telling me about how things perceived by one person are not perceived by another? Just because you didn't hear about it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. This article describes research that claims enormous bias in social studies (social psychology here):

Dude, this is another Non sequitur

A non sequitur is something which is irrelevant to the current point. When we have social psychology faculty discriminating to an extraordinary degree against conservative beliefs at the faculty level (which I might add grossly violates one of the core principles of a college, encouraging the free exchange of ideas - this is not a walking on grass minor violation), it stretches credulity to claim that they similarly won't discriminate against their students on the same basis.

How would they do that?

These are 18-year-olds. They couldn't vote for either Romney nor Obama, and even if they were strongly one way or the other there's no place to put that on the application.

And let's mention your very last sentence:

Says the guy who insisted that evidence of political bias in hiring PhDs was evidence of political bias in admitting undergrads.

And you don't? Really?

Like I said, it's pretty much impossible to think of a mechanism for that, and even if you supply one you;re gonna have to come up with some evidence befvore I start taking you seriously.

So your response to my pointing out the implication of your argument is that racism is true (as is shown by lower admission rates), is to offer another proof that racism is true (as is shown by lower graduation rates).

And your solution to the problem is not "let's try to figure out what we can do to fix this," it's to say "well I guess racism is true."

Maybe if you read what I actually wrote? Because I didn't write that.

K-12 education is what needs to be fixed here (as well as a number of other things that tend to target young blacks like minimum wage laws and the war on drugs). Colleges can't do that much about things they don't control by definition.

It's interesting you bring those up in the conversation now because you never mentioned them before. Moving the goalposts is one thing, building your own damn field three counties over and declaring you'd actually been playing there the whole damn time is quite another.

As for "things that target young blacks," rich whites eager to pay sub-minimum-wage wages tend to be much more incensed about the impact of the minimum wage on the black community then actual blacks. They do tend to hate the War on Drugs (*or at least certain elements of it, like stop-and-frisk and sentencing disparities).

Allow me to be blunt:

That's how science works all the time. Everybody always thinks they know how the experiment will go, and they all have a plan to get maximum exposure so that their colleagues will hear their names and their careers will grow. By arguing otherwise you indicate that your uinderstanding of science is based entirely on what your fifth-grade teacher told you.

This is the second dumbest thing you've said to date. We have evidence, which I quoted, that Cook was already confident what the conclusion was going to be and already planning how to market that result to the public as naked propaganda. That's a huge amount of demonstrated bias before the research even started, not a "scientists have to self-promote too".

So has pretty much every experimenter, before pretty much every experiment ever. You don't go to Principe to wait for a 410-second eclipse with a specialized camera unless you have a damn strong opinion on what said camera will get

Hand in your geek card. You can apply to get it back after reading The Code book.

I can tell it's truly News for Nerds because I can barely understand what it's saying and it drops causal references to advanced mathematics

I recommend you start visiting arXiv then.

Are you suggesting the OP, a self-described interested lay person, learns or even mere follow mathematic research by reading arXiv? If so, WTF!?

arXiv is a pre-print archive of original research articles, not exactly a welcoming place for a non-mathematician (or non-subject specialist, e.g. physics, and computer science also use it). Even with an undergrad degree in mathematics, I find it a difficult (and/or useless) place to try to follow progress in the field, without the editorial assistants to filter the wheat from the chaff. And I've been reading original (first source) research papers since the mid-1990s in multiple research disciplines.

You might as well ask him to read Euclid's Elements in its original Greek. Heck, after the translation, it would be more accessible, as it is intended to be a textbook for learning.

I would rather suggest, try reading some of the mathematics journals that are intended to be more accessible, such as from MAA and AMS societies. Some are aimed at students of two-year and four-year "colleges" (aka polytechs / technical colleges and universities), while others are just interesting yet often accessible, such as Journal of Recreational Mathematics and Mathematics Magazine and online columns such as Kevin Devlin's Devlin's Angle.

In the more general sense, I would recommend popular math writers such as Ian Stewart, Simon Singh, Paul J. Nahin, the recently deceased Martin Gardner (slashdot), and many more authors that I cannot recall.

Unfortunately I can't think of any pop-math books or articles on linear algebra, in the vein of "e: The Story of a Number" (Maor), "An Imaginary Tale" (Nahin), "Flatland" (Abbott), "Flatterland" (Stwart), "A Mathematician's Apology" (Hardy), "Fermat's Last Theorm" / "Fermat's Engima" (US) (Singh), "Does God Play Dice?" (Stewart), "Chaos" (Gleick), and many others.

To wit, mathematics is I believe the only discipline where fourth year undergrad students take third or fourth year courses with "introduction" or "elementary" in their course titles. But I digress. My point is that one "problem" is that given mathematics long history, and that is has fascinated people across cultures throughout history, the subject has accumulated such a vast body of knowledge, so it is difficult to get a firm understanding on every field within mathematics. So feeling overwhelmed with all the facts and fields to learn is normal.

I can tell it's truly News for Nerds because I can barely understand what it's saying and it drops causal references to advanced mathematics

I recommend you start visiting arXiv then.

Are you suggesting the OP, a self-described interested lay person, learns or even mere follow mathematic research by reading arXiv? If so, WTF!?

arXiv is a pre-print archive of original research articles, not exactly a welcoming place for a non-mathematician (or non-subject specialist, e.g. physics, and computer science also use it). Even with an undergrad degree in mathematics, I find it a difficult (and/or useless) place to try to follow progress in the field, without the editorial assistants to filter the wheat from the chaff. And I've been reading original (first source) research papers since the mid-1990s in multiple research disciplines.

You might as well ask him to read Euclid's Elements in its original Greek. Heck, after the translation, it would be more accessible, as it is intended to be a textbook for learning.

I would rather suggest, try reading some of the mathematics journals that are intended to be more accessible, such as from MAA and AMS societies. Some are aimed at students of two-year and four-year "colleges" (aka polytechs / technical colleges and universities), while others are just interesting yet often accessible, such as Journal of Recreational Mathematics and Mathematics Magazine and online columns such as Kevin Devlin's Devlin's Angle.

In the more general sense, I would recommend popular math writers such as Ian Stewart, Simon Singh, Paul J. Nahin, the recently deceased Martin Gardner (slashdot), and many more authors that I cannot recall.

Unfortunately I can't think of any pop-math books or articles on linear algebra, in the vein of "e: The Story of a Number" (Maor), "An Imaginary Tale" (Nahin), "Flatland" (Abbott), "Flatterland" (Stwart), "A Mathematician's Apology" (Hardy), "Fermat's Last Theorm" / "Fermat's Engima" (US) (Singh), "Does God Play Dice?" (Stewart), "Chaos" (Gleick), and many others.

To wit, mathematics is I believe the only discipline where fourth year undergrad students take third or fourth year courses with "introduction" or "elementary" in their course titles. But I digress. My point is that one "problem" is that given mathematics long history, and that is has fascinated people across cultures throughout history, the subject has accumulated such a vast body of knowledge, so it is difficult to get a firm understanding on every field within mathematics. So feeling overwhelmed with all the facts and fields to learn is normal.

Well, all slashdot readers have probably read The Code Book by Simon Singh years ago. No article is needed at this point, nothing new here.

Brian Cox has presented loads of stuff on British TV. Richard Dawkins needs no introduction. Simon Singh has written lots of books and presented many TV shows.

The Code Book, by Simon Singh

http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Code_Book.html

Can a quantum computer create prime numbers so large that another quantum computer could not factor the composite?

I believe the trick with quantum computers is that they can attempt all combinations simultaneously. If that's the case, then the size of the target number is only significant if it exceeds the memory capacity of the quantum computer attempting the crack.

This book: http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Code_Book.html makes a reasonably good attempt at explaining the basic concepts of quantum computing and RSA to the average person (which includes me).

I don't believe Simon Singh's The Code Book is available online

At least the CDROM is.

Some 9,000 people were working at Bletchley Park at the height of the codebreaking efforts in January 1945, and over 10,000 worked there at some point during the war. A number were recruited for various intellectual achievements, whether they were chess champions, crossword experts, polyglots or great mathematicians. In one, now well known instance, the ability to solve The Daily Telegraph crossword in under 12 minutes was used as a recruitment test. The newspaper was asked to organise a crossword competition, after which each of the successful participants was contacted and asked if they would be prepared to undertake "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort". The competition itself was won by F H W Hawes of Dagenham who finished the crossword in less than eight minutes.

The review sounded rather familiar to me. I've got Singh's book 'The Code Book', turns out that's almost the same.
From Singh's site:

(quote)
The Science of Secrecy is my second book on cryptography. My first, called The Code Book, covers similar material to the Science of Secrecy. It is already available in paperback so it is somewhat cheaper. The advantages of The Science of Secrecy are that it is in hardback, better illustrated, and follows the structure of the TV series. If you have read The Code Book then you probably would not want to read The Science of Secrecy, but ... (end quote)

I really enjoyed reading The Code Book, by the way. It's an accessible introduction to cryptography.

Take a peek at his website: http://simonsingh.net/. As a math enthusiast, I really liked "Fermat's Last Theorem."

Ask the math department of your nearest univeristy for help.

A true reasearch project might be somewhat of an undertaking, but
they can probably find something appropriate.

BTW - don't cheat yourself of trying Simon Singh's CD-rom
on cryptology: http://www.simonsingh.net/Shop_-_Crypto_CD-ROM.htm l

... not mistakes. Have a look

CC.

• You use one-time keys which are the same length as the messages
• Your (pseudo-)random number generator is flawless

I think David Kahns "The Code Breakers" is the best source, but I can't find my copy of it:(

But Simon Sings "Codebook" has something about it. See also
http://www.simonsingh.net/History_of_the_Science_o f_Secrecy.html
and
http://www.open2.net/ictportal/comm/security/singh 3.htm

Also see the section: "Security properties" in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_ Enigma

Though the claim about the Alabama state legislature is pure nonsense, it is similar to an event that happened more than a century ago. In 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed a measure redefining the area of a circle and the value of pi. (House Bill no. 246, introduced by Rep. Taylor I. Record.) The bill died in the state Senate.

As a folklorist, I find this fucking hilarious. Somebody refutes one urban legend only to invoke another urban legend.

Get this straight, people: Indiana NEVER legislated the value of pi. In fact, the legislation on which the rumor is based actually isn't about pi, per se, but about "circle squaring". Here's a good explanation of what really happened:

http://www.simonsingh.net/Pi.html

(One minor mistake on this page, the digits in pi are anything but random)

You can also check out "A History of Pi" (Beckmann) for a more detailed explanation and a picture of the actual bill.

1. Bad result, confirm prediction: Eddington's test of General Relativity.
2. Bad result, invalidate prediction: can't think of one now
3. Good result, contradict prediction: Michelson Morley experiment
4. Good result, confirm prediction: Tons of those I am sure. Discovery of Uranus comes to mind.

And for scientist giving crap interviews: I have interviewed (once, I am/was an amateur) and talked to some brilliant professors at my local school that are quite verbal and engaging. I envy them! There is a huge range in how good scientists are at describing and publicisizing their work, but I believe that there is in general and underestimated resource out there for bringing science to the people (tm)!

If you are interested, I would suggest that you start by reading The Code Book by Simon Singh. It gives a good overview of the history of the battle between cryptography and cryptanalysis, and how ciphers have evolved to defeat methods of codebreaking. It's an interesting and entertaining read and you might gain some insight on how you would approach this particular cipher.

BTW, I have a truly marvellous solution to your cipher which this textarea is too small to contain.

If you are interested, I would suggest that you start by reading The Code Book by Simon Singh. It gives a good overview of the history of the battle between cryptography and cryptanalysis, and how ciphers have evolved to defeat methods of codebreaking. It's an interesting and entertaining read and you might gain some insight on how you would approach this particular cipher.

BTW, I have a truly marvellous solution to your cipher which this textarea is too small to contain.