PhD Students

Class five

I am available

Questions about a paper Advice on English

Small stuff: 3-518, drop in any time email sandy.harris@sjtu.edu.cn

If you need several hours

Ask me in email to cover topic in class This is your course Within reason, I can cover what you want

Or ask complicated questions in email I'll answer you, and put it on FTP for others

Or pick an evening, invite me for beer or food.

Anyone got spare time?

Program to read text files,

Create an interactive exercise

Students gets:

Biham & Shamir invented ??? differential cryptanalysis in ??? 1980s

Chooses a/an/the/0

FTP /sandy now has subdirectories

About English

Classic Papers

Miscellaneous – from other courses I have taught

RFCs – Internet documents

Used in Class – slides & exercises

I will continue adding to these

Original meaning of “thesis”

An idea you propose or defend

Luther's 95 Theses

Nailed to the door of a church in 1517

Criticized priests & pope

Started the Protestant Reformation

Cluetrain Manifesto -- 95 Theses

#1 Markets are conversations.

#2 Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

#3 Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

More Cluetrain

#15 In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

#16 Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

#17 Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.

Organising a thesis

Based on a paper by Chinnek http://www.sce.carleton.ca/faculty/chinneck/thesis.html

Full paper on FTP site, /sandy/About English

ThesisWriting.html -- original

ThesisChinese.html – translation

AdviceOnWriting.html – link collection

Original contribution to knowledge

Original – must review literature, show it is new

Contribution – must show it is useful or valuable

Knowledge – not just applying a known technique

Reader should learn something

It is impossible to be too clear

Some examiners may be from outside your field

Think about background they need, add it

Especially, make claims and goals clear

Avoid repetition where possible

Just an outline in Introduction

Details later

Repeat main points in conclusions

But not the same text three times!

Can you simplify?

Tables for data?

Tables for comparisons?

Appendices for programs and proofs?

Graphs?

Give simple examples?

Alice and Bob for security/cryptography

How does your algorithm factor 15 or 77?

Mouse for target, cats for sensors?

Try to avoid

It is obvious that ...

It follows immediately that ...

Reader feels stupid if it is not obvious to him/her.

Galois had an excuse for skipping steps.

You do not.

Also avoid

“As we know” -- strange expression

You have to defend your thesis

Examiners are likely to attack it

Try not to leave openings

They are likely to give you a bit of a hard time

Try not to be caught by surprise

White hat & Black hat

Old Western movies – good guy = white hat

Black hat hacker – breaks into systems

White hat hacker – protects them

Think about attacks on your paper

What are the hard questions?

Don't claim too much

Software is the most important part of a system.

Can you prove that?

Can you defend it?

Another

Nearly all scientific calculations require matrix multiplication.

Exactly what does “nearly all” mean?

Do they “require” MM, or could they be done in other ways? Why is MM preferable?

What types can be done without MM?

Another

Differential cryptanalysis provides extremely efficient attacks against many block ciphers.

What is “extremely efficient”?

Something that needs > 2n/2 blocks of known plaintext is horribly inefficient, isn't it?

Has a practical break ever been achieved this way?

Be ready for “curve ball” questions

Your paper is on a cryptanalysis technique

How do we design a cipher to resist it?

You write on sensors and avoidance

What about an enemy who destroys sensors?

Would your hash fit on a smartcard?

What about timing attacks?