In honor of National Women's History Month, the National Cryptologic Museum has this wonderful page on women in cryptology. https://cryptologicfoundation.org/what-we-do/stimulate/women-in-cryptology.html?fbclid=IwAR395Ib3U8HrocBNW35AbNnk3f8VFw6Pkjv0aop57nMoqrLrMH6NLbZ6Da0
I also highlight several women in cryptology during the interwar period and World War II in my book History of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis http://tinyurl.com/y4ehjl9t notably Elizebeth Smith Friedman, Agnes Meyer Driscoll, and Genevieve Grotjan. See in particular, Chapters 7 and 9.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Friday, March 8, 2019
Young people make me feel old
"1974. I wasn't even born till two years later."
That's the sentence that one of my colleagues rattled off while we were sitting in a hotel ballroom listening to a computer science conference introduction by the conference chairs. The speaker at the podium was rattling off the 10 best CS education conference papers of the last 50 years and one of those papers happened to have been published in 1974.
1974 was the year I received my bachelor's degree. I was 22 in 1974 and my colleague wasn't yet a glimmer in his mother's eye. It turns out that I read that paper the year it was published. I'm now 66 and retired from full-time teaching, but still active in the discipline and in our professional society. It doesn't help that I was the one who chaired the search committee that hired this colleague into our small CS department 13 years ago.
Increasingly, my young former colleagues, to say nothing of my 30-year-old son, make me feel old. It started when my students all of a sudden stopped getting my pop cultural references. I mean, who hasn't heard of Monty Python or Firesign Theatre or America or the first season of the "original" Star Trek? Really? It hasn't gotten any better either. Now it's come to the point that most of the people I interact with at this particular CS conference - which I've been attending on and off for more than 30 years - all have gray hair, if they have any hair at all. And there seem to be lots and lots of attendees who appear to be children. How did this happen? There I was having a career, teaching, writing, doing research, mentoring students, and all of a sudden those same students want to hold the door open for me. It is very puzzling.
Because, of course, most of the time I don't "feel" old. Yes, my knees creak when I stand up from my desk and when I go up the stairs. Yes, I occasionally have to spend a few seconds reaching for a word during a conversation. And yes, my hair is thinner and my beard is white. But up inside my skull I don't feel that old. I still like research and writing. I still have lots of ideas for new books and papers. I still like talking to my colleagues about new things in CS and in cryptology. I like walking and going to new places, or even old places. I still get that warm feeling whenever I look at my wife. So maybe while old is physical, and that's the one thing you can't change or reverse, the other "old" is a state of mind you can just ignore. I think I'll just resolve not to let young people make me feel old. Instead, I'll just feel young and experienced.
That's the sentence that one of my colleagues rattled off while we were sitting in a hotel ballroom listening to a computer science conference introduction by the conference chairs. The speaker at the podium was rattling off the 10 best CS education conference papers of the last 50 years and one of those papers happened to have been published in 1974.
1974 was the year I received my bachelor's degree. I was 22 in 1974 and my colleague wasn't yet a glimmer in his mother's eye. It turns out that I read that paper the year it was published. I'm now 66 and retired from full-time teaching, but still active in the discipline and in our professional society. It doesn't help that I was the one who chaired the search committee that hired this colleague into our small CS department 13 years ago.
Increasingly, my young former colleagues, to say nothing of my 30-year-old son, make me feel old. It started when my students all of a sudden stopped getting my pop cultural references. I mean, who hasn't heard of Monty Python or Firesign Theatre or America or the first season of the "original" Star Trek? Really? It hasn't gotten any better either. Now it's come to the point that most of the people I interact with at this particular CS conference - which I've been attending on and off for more than 30 years - all have gray hair, if they have any hair at all. And there seem to be lots and lots of attendees who appear to be children. How did this happen? There I was having a career, teaching, writing, doing research, mentoring students, and all of a sudden those same students want to hold the door open for me. It is very puzzling.
Because, of course, most of the time I don't "feel" old. Yes, my knees creak when I stand up from my desk and when I go up the stairs. Yes, I occasionally have to spend a few seconds reaching for a word during a conversation. And yes, my hair is thinner and my beard is white. But up inside my skull I don't feel that old. I still like research and writing. I still have lots of ideas for new books and papers. I still like talking to my colleagues about new things in CS and in cryptology. I like walking and going to new places, or even old places. I still get that warm feeling whenever I look at my wife. So maybe while old is physical, and that's the one thing you can't change or reverse, the other "old" is a state of mind you can just ignore. I think I'll just resolve not to let young people make me feel old. Instead, I'll just feel young and experienced.
Friday, February 8, 2019
Medicare for All?
It's looking like universal health care is shaping up to be one of the major issues of the 2020 election. Unfortunately, I think the term "Medicare for All" is misleading. (See https://www.npr.org/2017/09/14/550768280/heres-whats-in-bernie-sanders-medicare-for-all-bill)
Senator Sanders bill (AFAIK) proposes to convert the United States healthcare industry into a single payer system with the government being the single payer. It proposes to eliminate private medical insurance and the private health insurance industry. While I think that healthcare is a right, I think this proposal is wrong for the United States at this point in time. For one thing, it will result in a massive disruption in the healthcare industry which is currently set up for a mix of private and public insurance plans. For another, it will add confusion to the healthcare delivery system. And finally, it will never pass with the current generation of representatives in Congress. Here's a more modest proposal that will, I think, accomplish most of what Medicare for All wants, but is doable in my lifetime (and I'm 66).
I think that what should be done is that Medicare should be offered to everyone as one of the alternatives for insurance through the Affordable Care Act's state and federal exchanges. This will be the "public option" that was originally in the ACA, but was removed at the last minute in order to get the votes to pass the bill back in 2010. I also think that the Congress should re-instate the requirement that everyone have health insurance and also reinstate the penalty for not having health insurance (although this will not be really burdensome as you'll see later). This accomplishes a few important things:
(1) it makes sure everyone has insurance,
(2) it retains the private health insurance industry because people on Medicare will still want to buy Medigap and Part D (drugs) insurance. In conjunction with the mandatory insurance requirement, this should be a very lucrative market for insurance companies.
(3) it makes use of an already very efficient and competent insurance provider - the federal government, so no new bureaucracy will be needed (although I'm sure that with potentially millions of new enrollees, the Medicare employment numbers will rise).
There will, of course, be issues to overcome. (By the way, I've not researched all of these; I just think they are likely because of common sense and my own experiences with the health insurance industry and Medicare. So take all this with a grain of salt.) First, I think it's likely that the 1.45% Medicare payroll tax will need to be increased, probably to somewhere between 3% and 5% (probably more). However, since many people will not now have to pay higher premiums for private health insurance and their deductibles will almost certainly be lower so that may not increase their overall spending. A Medicare for All public option will also have to figure out how to fold Medicare Part A premiums into the payroll tax, and there will have to be provisions to cover children (who obviously won't be paying the payroll tax). Probably the biggest issue will be what happens to all the taxpayers who get health insurance through their employers. The federal government could make a deal with employers to make Medicare the default option for their employees with the employers picking up some of the Medicare payroll tax. The Medicare payroll tax could also be reconfigured to be paid on a sliding scale based on a person's income. Just like one's income tax, the Medicare tax would adjust based on income.
There are obviously any number of things that I'm not thinking of here. But providing Medicare as a public option for the ACA seems like a first, logical step to getting us to 100% health care coverage.
Senator Sanders bill (AFAIK) proposes to convert the United States healthcare industry into a single payer system with the government being the single payer. It proposes to eliminate private medical insurance and the private health insurance industry. While I think that healthcare is a right, I think this proposal is wrong for the United States at this point in time. For one thing, it will result in a massive disruption in the healthcare industry which is currently set up for a mix of private and public insurance plans. For another, it will add confusion to the healthcare delivery system. And finally, it will never pass with the current generation of representatives in Congress. Here's a more modest proposal that will, I think, accomplish most of what Medicare for All wants, but is doable in my lifetime (and I'm 66).
I think that what should be done is that Medicare should be offered to everyone as one of the alternatives for insurance through the Affordable Care Act's state and federal exchanges. This will be the "public option" that was originally in the ACA, but was removed at the last minute in order to get the votes to pass the bill back in 2010. I also think that the Congress should re-instate the requirement that everyone have health insurance and also reinstate the penalty for not having health insurance (although this will not be really burdensome as you'll see later). This accomplishes a few important things:
(1) it makes sure everyone has insurance,
(2) it retains the private health insurance industry because people on Medicare will still want to buy Medigap and Part D (drugs) insurance. In conjunction with the mandatory insurance requirement, this should be a very lucrative market for insurance companies.
(3) it makes use of an already very efficient and competent insurance provider - the federal government, so no new bureaucracy will be needed (although I'm sure that with potentially millions of new enrollees, the Medicare employment numbers will rise).
There will, of course, be issues to overcome. (By the way, I've not researched all of these; I just think they are likely because of common sense and my own experiences with the health insurance industry and Medicare. So take all this with a grain of salt.) First, I think it's likely that the 1.45% Medicare payroll tax will need to be increased, probably to somewhere between 3% and 5% (probably more). However, since many people will not now have to pay higher premiums for private health insurance and their deductibles will almost certainly be lower so that may not increase their overall spending. A Medicare for All public option will also have to figure out how to fold Medicare Part A premiums into the payroll tax, and there will have to be provisions to cover children (who obviously won't be paying the payroll tax). Probably the biggest issue will be what happens to all the taxpayers who get health insurance through their employers. The federal government could make a deal with employers to make Medicare the default option for their employees with the employers picking up some of the Medicare payroll tax. The Medicare payroll tax could also be reconfigured to be paid on a sliding scale based on a person's income. Just like one's income tax, the Medicare tax would adjust based on income.
There are obviously any number of things that I'm not thinking of here. But providing Medicare as a public option for the ACA seems like a first, logical step to getting us to 100% health care coverage.
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
So, I saw an article in the online edition of Sporting News this morning (http://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/average-mlb-salary-falls-for-only-fourth-time-in-50-years-first-time-since-200/y0pslbvbu9pf1u16kb4mubxt8) that said the average major league salary for 2018 was about 4.52 MILLION dollars. Since I'd not yet finished my first cup of coffee I stared at that number for a minute and then said "that doesn't make sense." My reasoning was this: there are somewhere over 900 MLB players (30 teams, 25 players each, plus all the players on the diabled list) and a few of them make enormous salaries - more than $20 million a year, while the minimum MLB salary is a paltry $545,000. By the way, the highest paid MLB player in 2018 is Mike Trout of the Anaheim Angels at a cool $33.25 million and the top 25 players in the league all make more than $22 million. So, $4.52 million as an indication of what the "average" MLB player makes seems way off the mark. And after some more digging I discovered I was correct. While the AVERAGE salary is $4.52 million, the MEDIAN salary is a meager $1.5 million. This is a much more accurate indicator of what MLB players actually are making. Now, nearly every article I found on my Google search reported the average salary figure and I had to dig around quite a bit to find the median. It strikes me that the stories that just reported the average salary were slanted towards the "wow MLB players make way too much money" opinion, and they emphasized the average deliberately (IMHO) because that number was so much higher than the median value.
Just goes to show you that you should always think about what you're reading in any media. (And just to say that I would have played for just one year at that average salary; just pick a position. Really. 😎).
So, I saw an article in the online edition of Sporting News this morning (http://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/average-mlb-salary-falls-for-only-fourth-time-in-50-years-first-time-since-200/y0pslbvbu9pf1u16kb4mubxt8) that said the average major league salary for 2018 was about 4.52 MILLION dollars. Since I'd not yet finished my first cup of coffee I stared at that number for a minute and then said "that doesn't make sense." My reasoning was this: there are somewhere over 900 MLB players (30 teams, 25 players each, plus all the players on the diabled list) and a few of them make enormous salaries - more than $20 million a year, while the minimum MLB salary is a paltry $545,000. By the way, the highest paid MLB player in 2018 is Mike Trout of the Anaheim Angels at a cool $33.25 million and the top 25 players in the league all make more than $22 million. So, $4.52 million as an indication of what the "average" MLB player makes seems way off the mark. And after some more digging I discovered I was correct. While the AVERAGE salary is $4.52 million, the MEDIAN salary is a meager $1.5 million. This is a much more accurate indicator of what MLB players actually are making. Now, nearly every article I found on my Google search reported the average salary figure and I had to dig around quite a bit to find the median. It strikes me that the stories that just reported the average salary were slanted towards the "wow MLB players make way too much money" opinion, and they emphasized the average deliberately (IMHO) because that number was so much higher than the median value.
Just goes to show you that you should always think about what you're reading in any media. (And just to say that I would have played for just one year at that average salary; just pick a position. Really. 😎).
Monday, September 10, 2018
New Book!
Springer-Verlag has just published my latest cryptology book History of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis: Codes, Ciphers and their Algorithms. If you read it, please let me know your opinion!
https://smile.amazon.com/History-Cryptography-Cryptanalysis-Algorithms-Computing/dp/3319904426/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1536610952&sr=8-1
https://smile.amazon.com/History-Cryptography-Cryptanalysis-Algorithms-Computing/dp/3319904426/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1536610952&sr=8-1
Monday, July 2, 2018
Billions and Billions and Billions of numbers...
So a week or so ago, someone got access to one of my credit card numbers and started buying things at the iTunes store. Capital One was on the job and immediately sent me text messages and emails asking "Is this you?" When I said "NO!" and submitted a fraud report they immediately canceled that card and got the charges rescinded and then within about 15 minutes they got me a new credit card number and said they'd be mailing me the new card (it arrived about 3 days later). This is all very cool. It was a bit inconvenient because this particular card was the one I used for all my Internet purchases (I use a different card for non-internet stuff), but eventually I got it all straightened out.
But then I started thinking about Capital One and how many new cards - and card numbers - they must generate in a single day. I also started wondering about how many credit card numbers there were and when they'd run out of numbers (like the IPv4 internet addresses - there are only 4 billion of them and we actually ran out several years ago, hence IPv6). Clearly the credit card companies don't re-use credit card numbers. Also clearly there are a finite supply of them. So eventually we'll run out right? Well, here's the math...
All the credit cards I have and know about use 16-digits for your credit card number, plus you also have a security code of either 3 or 4 digits. The security code doesn't enter into this computation, though. So with 16 digits that is 10^16 possible credit card numbers - 10,000,000,000,000,000 possibilities. Also remember that there are about 7 billion people on the planet.
Now if all the credit card companies give out 1 million (10^6) new credit cards a day, that's 365 million a year. It will take about 3 years to get to a billion numbers (10^9), and 3000 years to get to a trillion (10^12), and 3 million years to get to a quadrillion (10^15). So I think we're good for a while.
But, a million numbers a day divided up between 7 billion people doesn't sound like very many. What if the credit card companies gave out 1 billion (10^9) new credit card numbers a day? Well, doing the same math we get 365 billion numbers per year. I will take 3 years to get to a trillion numbers (10^12) and 3000 years to get to a quadrillion (10^15) and 30,000 years to get to 10^16. So even if every person on the planet gets a new credit card every week we're still good for about 30,000 years. I'm happy.
But wait. There are other numbers. Your Social Security Number is only 9 digits long, which means there are only a maximum of 1 billion (10^9) possible numbers. There are currently about 325 million Americans with Social Security numbers, not counting all the dead people who had SSNs. So aren't we going to be running out of SSNs real soon now?
It turns out yes, and no. There's a great answer to this question on Quora that says that we've only used about 480 million of the billion possible numbers (there are actually fewer because some are excluded, like 000-00-0000 and 999-99-9999) and we're using them up at the rate of about 5.5 million a year. At that rate we'll use them all up in about 95 more years and we'll then have to either increase the length of your SSN, add a letter, or start reusing dead people's numbers. In 95 years I'd be over 150 years old, so I don't think I have to worry.
But then I started thinking about Capital One and how many new cards - and card numbers - they must generate in a single day. I also started wondering about how many credit card numbers there were and when they'd run out of numbers (like the IPv4 internet addresses - there are only 4 billion of them and we actually ran out several years ago, hence IPv6). Clearly the credit card companies don't re-use credit card numbers. Also clearly there are a finite supply of them. So eventually we'll run out right? Well, here's the math...
All the credit cards I have and know about use 16-digits for your credit card number, plus you also have a security code of either 3 or 4 digits. The security code doesn't enter into this computation, though. So with 16 digits that is 10^16 possible credit card numbers - 10,000,000,000,000,000 possibilities. Also remember that there are about 7 billion people on the planet.
Now if all the credit card companies give out 1 million (10^6) new credit cards a day, that's 365 million a year. It will take about 3 years to get to a billion numbers (10^9), and 3000 years to get to a trillion (10^12), and 3 million years to get to a quadrillion (10^15). So I think we're good for a while.
But, a million numbers a day divided up between 7 billion people doesn't sound like very many. What if the credit card companies gave out 1 billion (10^9) new credit card numbers a day? Well, doing the same math we get 365 billion numbers per year. I will take 3 years to get to a trillion numbers (10^12) and 3000 years to get to a quadrillion (10^15) and 30,000 years to get to 10^16. So even if every person on the planet gets a new credit card every week we're still good for about 30,000 years. I'm happy.
But wait. There are other numbers. Your Social Security Number is only 9 digits long, which means there are only a maximum of 1 billion (10^9) possible numbers. There are currently about 325 million Americans with Social Security numbers, not counting all the dead people who had SSNs. So aren't we going to be running out of SSNs real soon now?
It turns out yes, and no. There's a great answer to this question on Quora that says that we've only used about 480 million of the billion possible numbers (there are actually fewer because some are excluded, like 000-00-0000 and 999-99-9999) and we're using them up at the rate of about 5.5 million a year. At that rate we'll use them all up in about 95 more years and we'll then have to either increase the length of your SSN, add a letter, or start reusing dead people's numbers. In 95 years I'd be over 150 years old, so I don't think I have to worry.
Friday, June 29, 2018
Furor over diversity in CS Higher Ed
A few days ago Stuart Reges, a CS prof at the University of Washington wrote an opinion piece at Quillette.com on "Why Women Don't Code". It's started quite the furor in the CS higher education community and garnered more than 325 comments and not all of them nice or civil. I won't even talk about the stuff that's come out on Twitter. There have been some good, well reasoned and reasonable responses. Here's a good response to Reges' article from Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Education titled Furor on Claim Women's Choices Create Gender Gap in Comp Sci
The best comment here is the first one after the article (by "Helen") that tries to be also reasonable and is also well thought out. After that first comment most of the men responding in the rest of the comments devolve into defensive drivel almost immediately...
While I think that Reges has a point about women making a choice not to pursue CS and I like his "equality" vs "equity" models, his argument is much too narrow and he doesn't consider many other contributing factors besides the intro courses and the welcoming attitude of the department that will go into those choices. But it's a good discussion to have. I also don't agree with Reges' defense of Damore (the fired and allegedly misogynistic Google engineer) since if I remember correctly, Damore's argument was that women weren't biologically capable of coding as well as men. That's just stupid and merits no defense.
These articles and the discussion they have started are worth having - as long as we can all remain civil.
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