Helping someone practice Oxford Maths Assessment Tests at present, and whatever else may be happening in the admissions process, those test papers are not getting easier over time.
It has ringers taking breaks (for beer, I think) during peals and handing off to other ringers which I was surprised was allowed (till bellringing friends told me it wasn't...). Still a good book though.
The video lectures are excellent too. Anyone interested in this stuff could do far worse than start here (though a little dated now - fundamentals fine though)
Hmm.. I see what you mean. But I'm not able to relate to it personally. Whenever I hear enigma, the next word that comes to mind is 'cipher', not 'code'. The second word is 'algorithm' and still not 'code'. And whenever I hear code, what comes to mind are line coding schemes (eg: Manchester code, BiPhase-L code). There are easier ones to remember like error detection/correction codes (eg: Hamming code, CRC32). But I still think of line codes for some odd reason.
The problem with information theory is that it's very easy to get things mixed up hopelessly, unless you decide in advance what each term means. There are too many similar concepts with similar names.
In some languages, it may be more common than in English to refer to passwords with the counterpart word to "code" (e.g. "access code"). There's also the idea of a "coded"/"encoded"/"encrypted" message. "coding" ~ "secrecy" ~ "cryptography".
Same situation. I get it. But not able to relate to it personally. The term I use consistently for it is 'cryptanalysis'. I have done it for some very simple ciphers. But I don't remember using the term 'codebreaking' to describe it. I have also done 'decoding' in some cases. But those didn't have anything to do with ciphers or encryption.
There is a possibility that most people pick up those ideas from their everyday language, while I got mine from formal education (English isn't my first language, though my proficiency in English is higher than for my first language). Either that or I completely forgot those terms at some point in my life and got replaced with the formal terms instead. (It's a slightly puzzling personal peculiarity.)
There's nothing wrong with these terms, its just that in popular conversation, the "secret" code usage would be quite common. For instance I just googled "enigma machine documentary" and I've seen around twenty separate occurrences of "code" and only a single "cipher".
Yes. It's probably my personal peculiarity due to the way I originally learned and practiced it. Though, I wonder how it is for full-time practitioners of crypto design/analysis. Many of the terms are loaded and you've to be pretty careful about what you express and interpret.
Did Father Ted have much impact in the US? - it always seems v British/Irish in its humour (but that’s true of Monty Python of course and that obviously made it over there)
It didn't have the cultural impact of many other shows, though certainly some people know of and have seen it. It's less well known/referenced than even Red Dwarf and other fairly niche shows in my experience.
I got a lot more out of his Metamagical Themas (scientific american columns) collection book. Eg Lisp and making self-referential sentences (“This sentence contains three a’s, one b, …”)
I noticed watching the recent 4K release of The Terminator that the garage attendant in the final scene has a piece of paper in his top pocket with "There's a storm coming“ written upside down on it.
"Casualties", not kills. Perhaps using floating point is for working with another Terminator, or the decimal value being calculated based on the wound inflicted, with a whole number being a kill.
Or really, just to Look Cool And Technical And Shit.
Certainly with maths you’re marked almost totally on written exams, but even if that weren’t true you’re also required to go over example sheets (hard homework questions that don’t form part of the final mark) with a tutor in two-student sessions so it’d be completely obvious if you were relying on AI.
I really like oral exams on top of regular exams. The teacher can ask questions and dive into specific areas - it'll be obvious who is just using LLMs to answer the questions vs those who use LLMs to tutor them.
Of course, the reasons they do quizes is to optimize the process (need less tutors/examiners), and to remove bias (any tutor holds biases one way or the other).
