Math EE - RSA

[yowayowashi]

so.. hi! Turns out that I was the only guy crazy enough to do an EE on math in my grade so here I am.... My EE is roughly about proofing the RSA cryptosystem with applications of the discrete logarithm problem, the diffie-hellman key exchange, euler's totient, fermat's little theorem, and more.. My supervisor said it's quite risky to write an essay of trying to proof as i can end up plagiarizing if im not careful with my wording..

what do you guys think? should i change my question instead or? progress wise, I think i'm also a little bit behind with meeting my deadlines :|

Edited April 20, 2014 by yowayowashi

[ElvenRanger]

Fellow math EE student, finally!!

Anyway. Did your supervisor explain *how* your wording could become plagiarism? Because mine said nothing of the sort to me. If he/she's worried about that run a rough draft through turnitin, which will also show you the areas which seem to come from other sites/student papers. When's your final EE due? I'm not sure I'd change the Research Question if you've already got deadlines you need to be meeting. Do you have several backup topics on-hand that intrigue you and that you'd be willing to spend a lot of hours researching/reading up on? If not then I wouldn't change your topic.

Unless your current topic isn't as fascinating/illuminating as you want it to be, and you have a backup topic ready that you'd be much more invested in, I'd say stay with your current topic. Sounds really cool, too! I love getting to show people that ahem, math is extremely applicable if you know where to look.

Congratulations on choosing a math EE (I'm in the same boat as you with regards to my class!), and best of luck on the final draft, your other IB efforts, and your future endeavors!

[elaifyanre]

Hey I did the exact same thing for my math exploration!

I'd say doing only the proof (or making the proof as the major part of your EE) is pretty risky, as it's true that you can find the proofs for the RSA cryptosystem everywhere online.

I tried to include a lot of stuff else than the proof itself in my exploration to ensure that even if the moderator suspects I didn't derive the proof myself I'll still get high marks for the use of mathematics criterion for other work shown in the IA, it ended up with about 3600 words (including numbers and formulas) so definitely long enough even for an EE. However I'm not sure how much "more" math you need for the EE.

For the EE it's probably better to investigate a more "original" topic that's hard to find lots of other's work on it because of obvious reasons, if you really like the RSA idea probably think of something else to do with it. You can include the proof if you want but examiners might and could consider that as not original. I don't think they would (and please don't!) automatically think that as plagiarizing, but they will probably not count that as part of your work that shows your mathematical skills when grading your essay.

Do a little search on google and read some A/B maths EEs and you will know what the examiners want from you.

[yowayowashi]

Fellow math EE student, finally!!

Anyway. Did your supervisor explain *how* your wording could become plagiarism? Because mine said nothing of the sort to me. If he/she's worried about that run a rough draft through turnitin, which will also show you the areas which seem to come from other sites/student papers. When's your final EE due? I'm not sure I'd change the Research Question if you've already got deadlines you need to be meeting. Do you have several backup topics on-hand that intrigue you and that you'd be willing to spend a lot of hours researching/reading up on? If not then I wouldn't change your topic.

Unless your current topic isn't as fascinating/illuminating as you want it to be, and you have a backup topic ready that you'd be much more invested in, I'd say stay with your current topic. Sounds really cool, too! I love getting to show people that ahem, math is extremely applicable if you know where to look.

Congratulations on choosing a math EE (I'm in the same boat as you with regards to my class!), and best of luck on the final draft, your other IB efforts, and your future endeavors!

Over here it's due october but I'm planning to finish it during summer break haha (nothing else to do), thanks man!

Hey I did the exact same thing for my math exploration!

I'd say doing only the proof (or making the proof as the major part of your EE) is pretty risky, as it's true that you can find the proofs for the RSA cryptosystem everywhere online.

I tried to include a lot of stuff else than the proof itself in my exploration to ensure that even if the moderator suspects I didn't derive the proof myself I'll still get high marks for the use of mathematics criterion for other work shown in the IA, it ended up with about 3600 words (including numbers and formulas) so definitely long enough even for an EE. However I'm not sure how much "more" math you need for the EE.

For the EE it's probably better to investigate a more "original" topic that's hard to find lots of other's work on it because of obvious reasons, if you really like the RSA idea probably think of something else to do with it. You can include the proof if you want but examiners might and could consider that as not original. I don't think they would (and please don't!) automatically think that as plagiarizing, but they will probably not count that as part of your work that shows your mathematical skills when grading your essay.

Do a little search on google and read some A/B maths EEs and you will know what the examiners want from you.

That's exactly what my supervisor said ha... she reccomended me to change to a topic that would show more applications (still in the confines of cryptogaphy, though) than "paraphrasing" existing proofs, so to speak

guess im back to square one..

any tips on how to make a good rq? I'm not that confident with the questions I come up with :/

good luck with exams!

Edited May 1, 2014 by yowayowashi

[elaifyanre]

That's exactly what my supervisor said ha... she reccomended me to change to a topic that would show more applications (still in the confines of cryptogaphy, though) than "paraphrasing" existing proofs, so to speak

guess im back to square one..

any tips on how to make a good rq? I'm not that confident with the questions I come up with :/

good luck with exams!

Hey I did a search online and found this essay http://ibpal.com/docs/math-ee-6

I don't know what it got but it seems good so at least it's possible to do something like that. Again it sort of only "showed" or narrated the math else than the proofs so I'm not sure if it got good marks in the subject-specific section or not, but I think if you do something like this, but not exactly the same as this essay (not that I think you will plagarize from that one-- see next paragraph) then you should be fine at least for the general criterions.

Some concerns: Not that RSA isn't good... I said I wrote my IA on it, but back then I didn't research about how overdone it is for IB, and it was an IA anyways so it didn't need to be so original. After searching "math extended essay cryptography rsa" it seems there's at least 20 EEs on the topic online which can be a problem--for math you don't have so many "perspectives" to talk about a single problem as in language/humanities.

↑TL;DR: the proof thing is probably okay but the topic could be overdone.

For math EEs as far as I know the RQ isn't as formulaic as the ones for other subjects: most people solve a problem, and the problem itself would be the RQ.