Slashdot Mirror
Cracking Crypto To Get Into College
Kallahar writes "New Scientist is running a story about a Canadian university who had students break an encrypted message in order to get into college. A good idea to grab a good student, but here in 'Free' America these kids would have been thrown in jail for violating the DMCA ..."
Of course, since it was just an encoded mathematical problem, I doubt they even bothered to copyright it. And it was the poster, not the editor, who made the stupid comment. I still would argue that the flambait line should of have been removed, but hey. Too bad you can't mod stories.
The idea sounds interesting, but kinda gimmicky. Especially with a scholarship for speed--with a problem it took 30 minute for _New_Scientist_ to solve (or did I misread something) that seems a bit silly. Now, waiving the application fee for anyone who solves it, that seems a more commensurate prize.
You know, this makes sense, up to a point. Most Liberal Arts kids have to write Essays to get into college, why not have Computer Science Geeky Kids Crack Codes?
Well, I think the major problem is the *lack* of creativity. This doesn't quite show that you have creative thought, only that you can deduce something logically. Now, as I understand it, that applies to programming, but really, if you're going to be a college student, life is more about creative problem solving than it is about logical.
Although, it is a neat idea. Will physics students be allowed to design experiments, or will others get similar "bonuses" to their college application process? I'd like to hope so.
Down with Standardized Tests, In With Creative Applications.
I lived in Lethbridge for a few months over ten years ago. It was a small town then and still is, as you can see here (less than 70,000 population).
IMHO, Southern Alberta is an attractive region if you're into farming or ranching, but doesn't generally have a large enough population to support the University of Lethbridge on its own. Calgary is only a couple hours away by car, and tends to draw the more city-minded students.
It seems the U of Lethbridge has to use these clever gimmicks to attract enough students from outside the region to keep itself viable. By making the crypto test relatively simple, it taps into the ego of a wider number of prospective students.
Pretty smart marketing move, actually.
Anybody want a peanut?
In the old times of FidoNet, I shared a BBS with several students. I was teaching computer science 101 then. At 00:00 AM, 8 hours before the exam, I posted the exam to the BBS, in postscript (with the first line deleted, so that it was not inmediately recognizable as such), and compressed with zoo (not a very popular compressor, now and them). I put a rubbish name on top, so that, well, it wasn't only using zoo and ghostview. I sent a message to the 3 students telling them that I had posted the message in the file area, without telling them the name or anything else. They managed to "crack" it the next morning, 2 hours before the exam. The zoo part was easy (it includes "zoo" as the first letter in the file), the PS file a bit harder, and the hardest part, 10 years ago, was to find a program to print PS (download it thru fidonet and all the stuff).
They passed, but not with high marks; after all, they had only a couple of hours to prepare it. They would have been better off studying thru the night...
It's just a BloJJ
That would mean that the average digit sum of a number was 5, which is clearly wrong.
I happened to find the same result as the parent ((45 * (10 ^(n-1)) * n) + 1), which makes it likely to be right. That gives 27.000.001.
Method: See that all possible combinations of 6-digit numbers are in the range 000000...999999. Then for a given digit all numbers occur with the same frequency due to symmetri. Then the average contribution of that digit is sum(0..9)/10=45/10. Then the average contribution of a 6-digit number is 6*45/10. There are 1.000.000 numbers in 000000...999999, so we multiply the average with 1000000. Now we have the sum from 1-999999, but we needed the sum 1-1000000, so we add digitsum(1000000)=1.
The result is then 45/10*1.000.000*6+1 = 45*100.000*6+1=45*10^(6-1)*6+1. Generalize the number of digits and you get the formula above.
Just because you broke some method of encryption doesn't necessarily make you a good computer science student. What about good design or object oriented techniques? How about math skills and knowledge of discrete mathmatics and its relation to programing language design
No, but that's what you're going to study to learn. The test is looking for logical deduction and reasoning skills that can't be learnt through academic study, but are necessary for it.
The cryotography turns out to have been very trivial.
Yep. The web site gives lots of hints, and even offers live help via E-mail. They are trying to make it almost as easy as possible. Why?
"The University of Lethbridge is holding a contest to attract computer scientist students",
This wasn't done as a scolarship program for deserving students. It's a PUBLICITY STUNT.
The hardest part is either translating all the letters by hand, or typing it into a program to translate it for you.
As for the math problem in the message -
Any Math major that can't find a pattern to get the answer deserves to be rejected.
Any Computer major that can't write a program to get the answer deserves to be rejected.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.