Homework

All assignment deadlines are due at 11:59pm on their respective days, and no late submissions will be accepted. Assignment submission will be handled through Gradescope.

You are encouraged to collaborate on the exercise sets. However, you must write up your solutions individually (without referring to any shared notes or written documents). You must include the names of the students you collaborated with on your submission.

Exercise Sets

There will be 7 exercise sets posted during the course of the semester. The exact scheduling and number will depend on the pacing of the course. These will generally be released on a biweekly basis. Each exercise set will contain 1-2 questions. You must use LaTeX to typeset your answers using the provided template. For each lecture you scribe (up to a maximum of 2), we will drop your lowest exercise set score.

Homework submission: All assignment submissions will be handled through Gradescope, and no late submissions are accepted.

Challenge questions: The exercise sets will often include optional challenge questions. These will not be graded but you are encouraged to think about them to develop a deeper understanding of the course material. For students interested in research in cryptography, thinking about these questions is strongly recommended.

Exercise sets:

Lecture Scribing

Over the course of the semester, you will be asked to scribe lectures. We will maintain a single Overleaf document to gather all of the scribed lectures. The link to the Overleaf repository is shared on the Ed Discussion board for the course. You should refer to and reuse notation and concepts from previous lectures when scribing to ensure consistency in the document. If you spot typos and errors in previous scribe notes, you are encouraged to correct those directly. After the lecture is completed, you should then go through and edit your notes, correct any typos, and fill in missing details.

This is a significant portion of your course grade, and you should plan to spend a few hours after the lecture to polish your scribe notes.

The grading rubric (out of 10) is as follows:

  • 6 points for technical correctness and completeness.

  • 4 points for spelling, grammar, and style.

The edited version is due at the end of the week following the lecture. For the week preceding spring break, the edited notes are due at the end of the following week. Your notes must be uploaded to the Overleaf repository and send me an email (dwu4@cs.utexas.edu) once your notes are ready for review.

If you do not receive full credit for a scribed lecture, you will have the opportunity to address the feedback and resubmit your scribe notes. You must upload your revised version within a week of receiving feedback for your lecture.