20/11/15

20/11/15

I've finished the improvements that were suggested by my supervisor and I believe that my essay is much more clear and less fragmented than before.  It is now slightly over the word limit, but I believe that, when I have feedback form my supervisor, I will be able to cut down the less relevant information, such as historical context, of the essay.

13/11/15

13/11/15

I've written the first draft of my essay and I haven't really needed to do much more research apart from skim reading further into the books I already had started reading.  I may have skipped some information, but it either wasn't relevant or wasn't as important as other pieces of information that I'd rather include considering the word limit.  I've been given feedback on my essay, but it's mainly small things like elaborating and explaining further some things that I've written.  I've also filled out the End-of-Project review with my EPQ supervisor and my project seems to be on track.

28/09/15

28/09/15

Instead of running the risk of still being researching as my deadline approaches, I'm going to start writing my essay now, according to my plan, and then I'll research what I need to know as I go along.  I'll be carrying on working my way through source materials as I write the first draft of my essay.

1/10/15

01/10/15

I've been reading 'The Code Book' in increments over the past few weeks, making selective notes, and am now half-way through.  I've learned about various important events in history have played a part in the development of cryptography, as well as many different types of ciphers, such as the Vigenere cipher and other polyalphabetic ciphers and homophonic substitution ciphers.  I also listened the first of a podcast series on Radio 4 about the history of coding, however, it, unfortunately, seems to be more about computer coding rather than cryptography, so far.
I've been filling out the relevant forms for my EPQ as I go along and I've written the first draft of my introductory paragraph of my essay, though it doesn't contain much technical content, and is more of an explanation of the rest of the essay.  I'm meeting my EPQ officer tomorrow for another meeting, so I'll see what she thinks of it then.

07/09/15

07/09/15

On Monday 7th September,  I watched a BBC2 documentary on Bletchley Park.  Whilst there were a few mentions of cryptography, the main focus was Gordan Welchman and his contribution to WWII traffic analysis and the development of the internet and, consequently, his later downfall when, like Alan Turing, Welchman was deemed a security risk and was discredited by the government.  Interesting to watch, but not entirely relevant to my EPQ.

26/08/15

26/08/15

From the 18th to the 24th August, I went to the UNIQ summer school at the University of Oxford with my subject being Maths: Numbers, Proofs and Codes.  The coding section of the lectures was very interesting an has given me a more modern understanding of the encryptions used in credit cards and the importance of extremely large prime numbers.  The lectures were given by Richard Earl, a professor in the Mathematical Institute in the university and as such the information is verified and relatively recent.
On the 26th August, I visited Bletchley Park and explored the museums, experienced a demonstration of the reconstructed Bombe machine as well as saw the exhibits of the film The Imitation Game which was based and filmed in Bletchley Park as it is about the decryption of the Enigma code during WWII.  The site is very authentic despite the renovations that are planned and as such the information that I gathered is valid.  I now have a more solidified understanding of cryptography during WWII and I feel that this is something I can include in my essay.  The film The Imitation Game is not entirely accurate and has been romanticized quite a lot, but the basics of the code breaking are still there, despite the Wrens' involvement being downplayed slightly.

26/06/15

26/06/15

Today I had my first meeting with my supervisor, went through the first two weeks of a future learn course on Developing Your Research Project and listened to a 50 minute lecture on the mathematics of codes and code-breaking by Dr James Grime.

In my meeting with my supervisor, we went over the topic I am basing my project on and looked at the less obvious codes that would be interesting to include in my research (DNA and the political aspect of coding), as well as some more possible resources that could be used throughout the duration of the course (GCHQ website, attempting to contact them).  This will be helpful when I'm conducting my preliminary research as it will help me to decide which books to borrow from libraries and which online lectures to watch, etc.  We also filled out the Record of Initial Planning so as to have the ideas written down on paper to get the project started.

Before the meeting, so that I could have a vague idea of what I will be doing, I looked up the AQA EPQ specification and I went through the first two weeks of an online course that wil, hopefully, enable me to carry out a well developed research project.  So far on the course, it has explained the benefits of research projects and has guided me to draft my research proposal based on my interests.

As I'm particularly interested in mathematics, and because cryptography fascinates me, I have decided to look at codes and ciphers; their history, their complexity and how the ciphers have developed over time.  The aim of my project will be to analyse the different types of codes, compare their complexity to decide which existing code is hardest to break, and then debate as to whether or not there will ever be a theoretically unbreakable code.  For this reason, I need to knowmore about codes, so I watched the previously mentioned lecture on Youtube - and took notes - to begin learning the foundation information of this topic.  After watching the clip, I have decided to look at the way crytpography has developed since the Spartans and also to look at the enigma code (I plan to read Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges and also, to do more research on how the Bombe machine was constructed and how it worked).