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ayeryn's review against another edition
4.0
I read the math part for my senior project so I really do not have any idea how the entire book is like. Anyway, I love the math. I love math.
jessrock's review against another edition
4.0
Written by a 16-year-old Irish girl who made a name for herself by doing research on cryptographic systems for an academic project, culminating in her inventing and testing out a new cryptographic algorithm. The book promises to teach some of the math involved without getting too complicated, and even tells the math-wary reader what chapters are skippable if you just want the story and not the math. The book is definitely enjoyable and engaging, although the math gets a little slow in the middle. I went into this not knowing much about cryptography and came out of it feeling like I did have some understanding of the subject. Some of the trivia she provides is also quite interesting, like the math behind ISBNs (they encode information such as the publishing house and end with an error-checking digit which, due to the length of the ISBN, requires it to be base-11, which is why the last digit of an ISBN can be 0-9 or X for 10). Straddling the middle section about math and cryptography are two sections about Sarah, her family, and her experiences presenting her research nationally and internationally, and it's interesting to see both how her family fueled her curiousity and helped keep her in check as the press was lauding her as a "genius" and trying to get her to patent her algorithm so she could "make millions."
sarahendipitie's review against another edition
4.0
Very interesting view into both Sarah's work and personal life.
merecolai's review against another edition
5.0
This book is easy, pulls one in, offers lots of fun math puzzles, and has gotten me more interested and motivated to study in maths than most books.
mephelan's review against another edition
4.0
A reasonably interesting memoir of 17-year old Sarah Flannery's time learning about cryptography and creating/discovering the Cayley-Purser algorithm.
davidr's review against another edition
4.0
This is a fun little book by a young woman who found some degree of fame in the field of cryptography. Growing up in Ireland, Sarah Flannery was constantly exposed to mathematics; her father, a mathematician, gave math and logic puzzles to her and her brothers. As a high school student, Sarah took a "transition" year off during high school, and worked for a cryptography company. She learned how to code algorithms in the Mathematica computer language. At the company, she was supervised by some gifted mathematicians, who gave her some difficult, challenging projects. She did well, and presented a very good science fair project at her high school. Her project was good enough to make it to the national fair, and then to an international fair.
Then Sarah decided she wanted to continue on, and do some original research. With the help of a mathematician mentor, she invented a new "trap door" algorithm that was much faster than the state-of-the-art algorithms. She presented her improved science fair project, and won at the national and international fairs. She had quite a big exposure, as the media caught on to her discovery.
In between her autobiographical narration, Sarah provides some fun mathematical puzzles. I loved the puzzle about the insurance salesman. Also, she guides the reader through elementary number theory, giving the reader enough understanding to grasp the essentials of modern-day cryptography.
Then Sarah decided she wanted to continue on, and do some original research. With the help of a mathematician mentor, she invented a new "trap door" algorithm that was much faster than the state-of-the-art algorithms. She presented her improved science fair project, and won at the national and international fairs. She had quite a big exposure, as the media caught on to her discovery.
In between her autobiographical narration, Sarah provides some fun mathematical puzzles. I loved the puzzle about the insurance salesman. Also, she guides the reader through elementary number theory, giving the reader enough understanding to grasp the essentials of modern-day cryptography.
scarlettletters's review against another edition
4.0
As a teenager, Sarah Flannery won a few international science competitions with a project about an encryption algorithm. Though it turned out that the algorithm couldn't be used for public key encryption, she got quite a lot of attention for her achievements. Her memoir details her early exposure to math, the ideas that are the basis for her award-winning project, and her personal feelings about the contests and their after-math.
The book contains explanations of some of the basic mathematical principles she used. She says you can skip those parts, but I would recommend not. People find math intimidating for whatever reason but it's mostly just arithmetic presented in different ways so at least give it a try. It was interesting to read about someone who had achieved so much, however is in many ways just a normal girl. She gives entries from her journal about the days following her contest win, and her emotions are pretty typical of a teenager.
Math lovers should definitely check this out. Anyone interested in math education or the presence of women in math and science would probably also enjoy it.
The book contains explanations of some of the basic mathematical principles she used. She says you can skip those parts, but I would recommend not. People find math intimidating for whatever reason but it's mostly just arithmetic presented in different ways so at least give it a try. It was interesting to read about someone who had achieved so much, however is in many ways just a normal girl. She gives entries from her journal about the days following her contest win, and her emotions are pretty typical of a teenager.
Math lovers should definitely check this out. Anyone interested in math education or the presence of women in math and science would probably also enjoy it.
logophile's review against another edition
3.0
I have to confess that I lost interest in the math, though I did learn a little about the one-way functions that make public-key cryptography work, which had formerly puzzled me. I found Sarah's personal experiences with the science contests more interesting, and I'd highly recommend this book to any young person with an aptitude in math or science.
ktlove's review against another edition
4.0
This was a fun, if dense read. She does a good job of laying out the math such that you can absorb as much as you want/can to get by enough to understand what she accomplished and what her project entailed, while leaving open the opportunity to dive deep into the math should you so choose. I walked a middle ground in that I read a large portion of the math stuff, but I did hit a wall where I finally decided to move along to the narrative...which was even better. Just fun to read about somebody having found such passion at such a young age and applying it so well.
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