4/26/2009: Group A:Probability Until Our Heads Explode
Group B: Secret Sharing and Multi-Party computation (Paul Bunn)

Group A: We'll be covering material related to chapters 8-9. Please read sections 8.2-8.4, and if you have time also take a look at 8.5, and perhaps a problem or two from chapter 9, which consists of a number of challenging problems. Since we've spent a few weeks going over the basics, this session will be about reviewing what we've learned and attempting some of these more challenging problems. I've included a number of problems below, with suggested numbers of problems per section of chapter 8. Here are some problems from the book: 8.2.2, 8.2.3, 8.3.1, 8.3.2, 8.3.4, 8.4.1, 8.4.3 From section 8.5: (If you get there) 8.5.1 Review: (If you'd like more practice) 8.17, 8.24 Challenge: (Try to solve at least one): 8.37, 9.8, 9.9, 9.10
Group B: Secret sharing refers to any method for distributing a secret amongst a group of participants, each of which is allocated a share of the secret. The secret can be reconstructed only when the shares are combined together; individual shares are of no use on their own. Secret sharing is an important primitive in several protocols for "secure multiparty computation (MPC)" (We will explore how mathematics and basic number theory can be used in cryptography to develop Secret Sharing schemes and Secure Multi-party Computation schemes.