The University of Arizona / MATHEMATICS

SWRIMS HIGH SCHOOL WORKSHOPS

Factoring and Primality Testing


You know that each number can be factored into a product of primes; for example, 2907 = (3)(3)(17)(19). Given a really big number, how do you quickly factor it? You could exhaustively try all possible divisors, but this might take too long. Is there a better method? Why is this important? The security of public-key cryptography rests on the assumption that factoring large numbers is computationally difficult. We'll learn some methods that are better than the exhaustive search. New algorithms are being discovered each year. You could be the one to come up with the next great algorithm!


Workshops:

Resources:

A lot of material is missing. If you are looking for something specific from one of the workshops, please send email to Alexander Perlis, aprl@math.arizona.edu . (Note: Please do let me know if you are looking for something. We would like to get everything on this website, but this is a volunteer effort, so we may not be adding things in the order in which people out there are looking for them. We need to know what you want.)


Webpage: http://www.math.arizona.edu/~rims/workshops/factoringIndex.html.html
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