SUNY Geneseo Department of Mathematics
Monday, August 30
INTD 105 17
Fall 2021
Prof. Doug Baldwin
(No Previous Lecture)
…to INTD 105, the Secrets and Secret Codes section.
I’m Doug Baldwin
For example, I’m a professor in the math department and a computer scientist, which maybe explains the “secrets and secret codes” theme — cryptography is very much a mathematical and computational subject these days. I use he/him/his pronouns.
How, in a sentence or so, would you introduce yourself to the rest of the group?
(Everyone briefly introduced themselves, typically with name, major, hometown, etc.)
Fundamentally, it’s a writing course.
Going a little further, it’s a course about persuasive academic writing, i.e., writing whose purpose is to convince a (vaguely) college-level audience of something. It’s not a course about writing mechanics, e.g., what the difference between commas and semicolons is.
Mostly, you’ll get better at this sort of writing by discussing and practicing it.
The secrets and secret codes come in as a context in which to practice writing. In particular, we’ll read and discuss various literary works involving cryptography (the technical term for making and using secret codes) and cryptanalysis (the technical term for breaking secret codes). You can think of the things I’ll ask you to write as being extensions of those conversations.
Be aware that all of the readings raise issues much larger than the particular codes in the stories, and a lot of the conversation and writing will be about those larger issues. Examples include portrayals of African Americans in American literature, historical accuracy in “historical” fiction, homosexuality in 20th century society, etc.
But we also spend time learning about the codes in the stories, maybe some other codes too, some of the history of cryptography and cryptanalysis, etc.
Wednesday we’ll talk about how this course will work and some of the policies and practices I’ll follow in it.
Please read the syllabus, available through Canvas, and ultimately at https://www.geneseo.edu/~baldwin/intd105/fall2021/syllabus.php. If you want a printed copy, just let me know.
“Read” the syllabus means sort of a middle ground between passing your eyes over each word once and calling it done (too superficial) and studying it until you’ve memorized it (too deep). Rather, skim over it to get a sense for what it talks about, so when you have questions about this course later you’ll have a sense for whether the syllabus is the place to find answers (you can wait to actually read much of it until you need those answers, as long as you know they’re there). As you do this, note points that seem particularly surprising, or particularly important/interesting to you personally — those are things that are worth remembering, maybe rereading, and maybe bringing up for discussion or as questions Wednesday.
Do come to class Wednesday with questions from the syllabus or other things about this course that you’d like to discuss in more depth. I’ll probably have some hypothetical questions to start conversations, too.
The one piece of business I want to do today is get a roughly 1-paragraph writing sample from each of you. This gives me a general sense of where you are now as writers. Also, students for whom English is not the first language may be able to wait a semester or two to take INTD 105 if doing so would help build English fluency, and the writing sample may help me advise some of you whether that might be a good choice for you.
You may have heard the theory, which by now actually seems pretty well accepted by scientists, that modern birds are actually the last living dinosaurs. This has always seemed like a fun theory to me, because it lets someone who notices a seagull talk about the dinosaur on the beach, mention how there always seem to be a couple of dinosaurs loose in the food court at the mall, etc.
Please write me a paragraph describing one way you react to this theory. (For example, do you find it fun like I do? If so, what are some of your own examples of fun things you can do with it? Or talk about whether you do or don’t believe it and why. Or if you just don’t care about it at all, you can say that and a bit about why. Et cetera.)
Ideally, write this electronically and email it to baldwin@geneseo.edu, or if that doesn’t work, write it on a piece of paper and leave it with me when you leave the room.
For wifi on campus, use network eduroam, with your Geneseo ID and password.