6.4 of Stein's book and final study, due December 7

As far as studying for the final: I feel a little lost. It feels like we have covered a million different things and anything at all will help me to be more prepared for the final. I know that I need to know all the primality tests (by name? and procedure) and all of the various functions that have been defined throughout the semester. I'm expecting the exam to look pretty much like the others have.
As for the reading: It didn't make a lot of sense to me. It sounds like a cool idea but my brain is fried. Luckily I did a make-up blog post earlier in the semester so that I don't have to try and pinpoint the one part that was difficult for me.

6.3 of Stein's book, due December 5

First, I was a little disappointed when we started using an online book. I really don't like reading online, plus I can't take the book with me throughout the day- which is why I bought the other one. So, does B-power smooth basically mean that in the prime factorization there are no repeated primes? That's what it seemed like but I feel like if that was all it meant then they would have explained it that way. I hope that we do an example of algorithm 6.3.2 in class, because their explanation didn't really tell me how to do it. If I can understand this by the end of class today, that'd be SWEET because factorization is something we've previously had no algorithms or extra aids for.

sections 6.1 and 6.2, due December 2

I think that both of these sections were entirely over my head. The picture in the first example (above where the section actually started) made sense and I thought I understood what an elliptical curve meant, but the next picture seemed to have nothing in common with the first. It also seemed like they were using some words with a definition different than the one I am used to or maybe I just don't know how to apply those definitions to this case. (order, characteristic) The cool thing was that it said this is used in cryptosystems and that is the same thing that impossible book problem referenced so I'm interested about how/if this applies to cryptography (or I will be once I understand it).