Alan Turing: The Applications of Probability to Cryptography [pdf]

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.04714v1.pdf

by Fede_V • 11 years ago

47 3 11 years ago

Great text - from the document, they were apparently both written during WWII and declassified "recently" - as far as I can tell, roughly three years ago.[0]

The editors have taken the original manuscripts and made them more presentable. In their own words:

"It is not our intent to cast Alan Turing’s manuscripts into a journal style article, but more to provide clearer access to his writing and, perhaps, to answer the questions “If Turing had have had access to typesetting software, what would his paper have looked like?”" So consider this to be "Alan Turing meets LaTeX".

Some interesting quotes:

"For instance if it is known the 20% of men live to the age of 70, then knowing of Hitler only Hitler is a man we can say that the probability of Hitler living to the age of 70 is 0.2. Suppose that we know that Hitler is now of age 52 the probability will be quite different, say 0.5, because 50% of men of 52 live to 70."

"Suppose that one man in five dies of heart failure, and that of the men who die of heart failure two in three die in their beds, but of men who die from other causes only one in four die in their bed, but of the men who die from other causes only one in four dies in their beds. (My facts are no doubt hopelessly inaccurate)."

"Straightforward Cryptographic Problems": This is a chapter heading that precedes the cryptanalysis of the Vigenere cipher, demonstrating the use of probability theories to the cryptanalytic methods used, among other things. There are over 20 pages dedicated to this. (Perhaps straightforward to someone with a background in the topic, but I still got a kick out of the title)

0. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/23/turing_papers_releas...

mgalka• 11 years ago

It is incredible how far ahead of his time he was on so many things.

I wonder how much further along our technology would be if his life had not been cut short.

jedberg• 11 years ago

Last night I finally got to watch "The Imitation Game". I was already familiar with Turing and his life, but that movie really solidified with me how terribly he was treated despite the fact that he was responsible for saving so many lives.

Alan Turing: The Applications of Probability to Cryptography [pdf]

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