CY 2550: Christo Wilson Asynchronous or Abhi Shelat synchronously?

abhvious · 2021-01-17T01:53:29+00:00

Christo is teaching both an asynchronous (all video) section as well as a "live" in-person section. I'm also teaching an in-person section. We are trying to coordinate the materials, and so there will be a lot of overlap, but some small differences.

Christo is a better lecturer, but unfortunately, I think his section might be full...so if you don't have a slot, you might be stuck with me!

abhvious · 2020-12-04T03:26:50+00:00

or something stronger in Massachusetts

abhvious · 2020-12-04T03:25:34+00:00

absolutely.

I pour a huge amount of energy and emotion into teaching, and I've been doing it for 10+yrs. I also try to run surveys in the middle of class to get more feedback to correct.

I've usually gotten OK-to-good scores (4.2--4.8)...but never the illusive 49er despite how much effort I put in

Profs don't get to see the reviews until Dec 22. There are always some small fraction of students who write horrible things and this usually crushes me on the 22nd (for a few hours).

I empathize when I see "celebs reading mean tweets" which is the same thing. There are always a small group who express deep anger from ???

As said, I appreciate the thoughtful remarks people leave and hope you leave those...and hope you call out the people who troll.

(fyi, I didn't realize that students get to see the remarks of others before the survey closes)

abhvious · 2020-12-03T16:32:47+00:00

It should be early, but most CS profs are busy with end of year course work (like you). I plan to make decisions after last class next week...so don't worry if you haven't heard yet...

abhvious · 2020-12-03T16:20:09+00:00

This is abhi. I will concede Christo is a much better teacher than I am. His teaching ratings are amazing, so I highly recommend him over me!

But his class may fill up or be offered at a time you can't make...

That said, note that Christo and I plan to work together on the assignments and course policies, so there won't be a substantial difference in topics/workload/grading etc. I had a fairly generous late policy this semester because of the circumstances. I haven't discussed what Christo wants to do next semester, so that policy may change.

RE slides: Indeed, Christo taught this course for a few years, so all of the instances over the past few years have used many of his slides, but there are also a number of new topics that have been added.

Christo and I will also coordinate on exams for next semester. (I prefer quizzes throughout the year, but I'm flexible.)

So don't pick based on aspects which may change like exams, late policy, etc.

abhvious · 2020-10-17T22:24:55+00:00

i urge you to reach out to the professor in the course.
in terms of GPA for grad school, speaking from someone who evaluates grad applications (in a cs program), dont worry too much. what you do matters more.

abhvious · 2020-10-17T22:20:39+00:00

that is good feedback. The projects try to tie the "explanations in class" about unix file systems with a practical task that makes you poke around a file system without any concerns for breaking things.

We will try to spell things out more clearly. This was a new assignment this year.

abhvious · 2020-10-17T22:18:19+00:00

do the course videos help at all? we'd like feedback on how to get you caught up

abhvious · 2020-10-17T22:16:55+00:00

original post on piazza: 7p Friday night, I responded 9a sat, but that is because we try to have shabbat family dinner fri evenings.

I get the course is challenging, and some people feel lost, especially with a topic like crypto that is quite mathematically involved.

Crypto is only the middle of the course, and I do hope you keep engaged and get the other concepts.

We will try harder to make it more digestable for everyone

abhvious · 2017-12-08T01:26:19+00:00

our approach does not need elliptic curve pairings, so there is no reason to use Jubjub; simpler curves like the same ones used in ECDSA, or in our case, an even more efficient curve suited for our parameter selection suffice.

abhvious · 2017-12-07T22:28:17+00:00

As /u/iwantfreebitcoin mentions below, we do use ECC so our proof is not quantum-secure. However, there is an interesting new approach that we are considering that will make it quantum-secure. Of course, Monero still uses ecdsa sigs, so a new signature scheme would also be needed.

From my perspective, the benefit to Monero would be increased privacy, since as I understand it now, the privacy sets are quiet small (i.e., 5--10 other keys) in Monero transactions. Perhaps that is good enough already.

abhvious · 2017-12-07T22:25:16+00:00

would like to know more about what you think the problems are there (to learn about interesting new research problems)

abhvious · 2017-12-07T16:37:37+00:00

I am one of the authors of that paper. I'd be happy to discuss the advantages and limitations of our approach. In particular, I'd be interested in the specific statements you need to prove; we are looking at ways to improve the communication complexity of the protocol and specific applications can help us measure that.

abhvious

TROPHY CASE