Hi everyone, and welcome to my series on cryptography!
Initially, I started writing this as a single post, but as I was planning what I wanted to include, and seeing how long it would become, I decided it’s best to split it into separate posts.
Cryptography is the study of techniques and procedures, such as using codes and ciphers, for secure (secret) communication between two or more agents. More specifically, it deals with finding sophisticated ways of hiding the true content of messages exchanged between communicators. People use cryptography in military and diplomatic communication, password protection, securing online transactions, as well as in any other context where some secret information needs to be protected from being accessed or understood.
As you’ll see in future posts, probability theory too can play an important role in cryptography.
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Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics with applications in fields like physics, economics, computer programming, and many others. In particular, probability theory is one of the fields that makes heavy use of combinatorics in a wide variety of contexts.