Misc
Return diagnostic writing exercise. Note that this isn’t graded, the purpose is to give you quick feedback on things you might want to consider soon to get college writing off to a good start. Comments are limited to that.
Any prospective math majors here might consider taking Math 101, “Welcome Math Majors.” A 1-credit course that orients you to the math department and its programs. Still time to add it to your schedule during drop-adds
Questions?
They Say, I Say Introduction
Conversation
Seriously? Are authors really having a conversation when they write?
Not necessarily consciously, but it is a productive way to think about what they’re doing, namely engaging with some previously established ideas and people who have espoused those ideas.
Can you describe some recent writing you’ve done in terms of a conversation? Who was it with?
- A literature paper that brought in the ideas of outside “authorities” on the author in question. (It can also be interesting in such papers to imagine yourself in conversation with the author of the work you’re writing about.)
- A paper on infant drug addiction that examined the problem from the point of view of the addicted children, their mothers, and people who see addiction as always the fault of the addict.
Templates
How do you imagine using them?
They can be starting points for text that makes “moves” you know you want, but don’t feel you have to stick to them verbatim.
Our Own Conversation
Talk about your own experience with and views of cryptography (the technical term for using secret codes). For example...
- Have you ever used cryptography? If so, what for?
- Are there situations in which it is ethically wrong to use cryptography? What about ethically acceptable? What about ethically necessary (i.e., situations in which it would be unethical not to use cryptography)?
- Are there situations in which it is ethically OK to try to break someone else’s secret code (the technical term here is “cryptanalysis”)? Situations in which it is ethically wrong?
- What, if anything, particularly interests you about cryptography?
Comments or follow-ups to the small group conversations.
- Everyone who uses the Internet today is a cryptographer, because almost all Internet traffic is encrypted. Not encrypting it would end electronic commerce, create serious threats to personal privacy, etc.
- It’s fairly easy to think of examples of cryptography or cryptanalysis that seem “good” or “bad,” but can you make an ethical argument for them that’s deeper than “good” uses help the “good guys” and “bad” uses help the “bad guys”?
- Is there ever a case where someone would want a secret code so secure that literally no-one else can read it? There was an interesting capstone project in history here a few years ago in which a student found and sometimes decrypted 19th century diaries that had been written in code; these were presumably intended as documents that only the author would be able to read.
Warm-Up Essay
Using the conversation(s) we just had about cryptography as a starting point, write a couple of pages that add something to one of the conversations.
See handout for details.
Demonstration of setting up a Google doc.
We will also use this essay as a chance to go through the whole writing process I will encourage in this course, namely
- Reading and conversation to generate ideas
- Writing drafts
- Feedback on drafts
- Revising drafts (in real life these last 2 steps cycle many times, we’ll usually just do one explicit cycle)
Next
Revision
Bring a computer to class Tuesday. Also bring 2 copies of your draft essay, if it’s not sharable online.