Math 412 Elementary Number Theory (Fall 2015)



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Tetative Syllabus for Math 412
(subject to change with time)

Instead of 70,000,000, now it is 268! See 268 paper.

Week Class Section covered Remarks                     
1 R Aug 27 Introduction to the course; well-ordering principle, divisibility and division theorem 1.1, 1.3, 1.5
2 T Sept 1 GCD, Euclidean Algorithm, and linear Diophantine equations 3.3, 3.4, 3.7
2 R Sept 3 primes numbers and unique factorization 3.1, 3.2, 3.5 Erdos-Selberg Dipute
3 T Sept 8 Congruence 4.1
3 R Sept 10 Congruence equations 4.2, 4.3, 4.4
4 T Sept 15 Congruence equations and congruence classes 4.1, 4.4
4 R Sept 17 Reduced system of residues and Wilson's Theorem 6.1 (part) and 6.3 (part)
5 T Sept 22 Fermat's Little Theorem and Euler's Theorem 6.1, 6.3
5 R Sept 24 Applications of Congruences Chapter 5
6 T Sept 29 Euler-phi-function, and sum and number of divisors 7.1, 7.2
6 R Oct 1 multiplicative functions and Mobius Inversion 7.4
7 T Oct 6 Perfect numbers and Mersenne Primes (GIMPS) 7.3
7 R Oct 8 Cryptography---Caesar Cipher and RSA Journey to Cryptography 8.1 and 8.4
8 T Oct 13 Fall break
8 R Oct 15 order of elements 9.1-9.2
9 T Oct 20 primitive root 9.2
9 R Oct 22 existence of primitive roots, and Discrete Logarithm 9.3-9.4
10 T Oct 27 Quadratic residues and nonresidues 11.1
10 R Oct 29 The Law of quadratic reciprocity 11.1-11.2
11 T Nov 3 the Jacobi Symbol 11.2-11.3
11 R Nov 5 Continued fractions 12.2-12.3
12 T Nov 10 Periodic continued fraction 12.4
12 R Nov 12 Pell equation 13.4
13 T Nov 17 Pythagorean triples and Fermat's Last Theorem 13.1-13.2
13 R Nov 19 Gaussian Integers, Gaussian primes, GCD 14.1-14.2
14 T Nov 24 Review (of homework problems)
14 R Nov 26 Thanksgiving Day
15 T Dec 1 Prime factorization, sums of squares 14.2-14.3
15 R Dec 3 Sum of squares and congruent numbers 13.3, 13.5
16 W Dec 16 Final exam 2-5pm