As I said before, your term paper should be 8-12 pages long with reasonable font size and spacing. The topic can be on virtually any topic related to cryptography. It can be oriented towards mathematics, towards programming or software design, or towards discussions of policy and social aspects of cryptography. (You may do a programming project, but I expect it to be accompanied by 8-12 pages of English text.) Your topic should be specific. Eight to twelve pages is not a very long paper and I would like more than vague generalities. Some help with library research, including sources, may be found on the on the Duke University Libraries Guide to Library Research web site.
Your paper needs to have a bibliography. I don't really care what format
you use; any of the standard ones will do. Examples from several of the
standard ones may be found on the Citing
Sources
web page of the Duke
libraries. This includes examples of how to cite a web site.![[*]](http://www.math.duke.edu/Icons/latex2html_icons/foot_motif.gif){kind=icon}
As I said, I will hold you responsible for any
misinformation that you get from a web site, so if you have any question
about the reliability of a source you should definitely consult with me.
(The web sites I have assigned for readings are basically reliable.) If
you have any doubts on what does and does not need to be cited in your
paper, see the section on plagiarism.
As usual, I will grade your term paper on spelling, grammar, and punctuation in addition to content. I will also be looking for good composition skills. You do not have to write the Great American Novel (in fact, I'd rather that you didn't!) but I expect the paper to be organized in a coherent manner. If you do not have a favorite composition text you may wish to look at ``Elements of Style'' by Strunk and White or ``On Writing Well'' by William Zinsser. Other useful resources for writers can be found on the University Writing Program web site . Your final paper grade will be determined by the average of the first draft and the second draft. Therefore you should not consider the first draft as a ``rough'' draft, but rather as something you are proud to turn in, even if there is still room for improvement. If you have a spelling checker or a grammar checker that you like, by all means use them on your first draft.
If you have any other questions, please ask!
(Added note: You do need to use sources other than your textbooks on the term paper, and you do have to cite your textbooks if you use them.)
If you think that you will need an extension of one of these deadlines please try to let me know at least a day in advance.
If you are not familiar with what does and does not constitute plagiarism, you may wish to look at a web page such as
Briefly speaking, if you quote three or more words from a source without paraphrasing, you must put them in quotation marks and note where they came from. If you paraphrase information from a source, you must cite the source unless it is ``common knowledge''. The rule of thumb is that anything you find in three or more different sources is common knowledge. (Even if you find something in three or more sources, you may wish to give a citation for one of them.) Plagiarism is a violation of the University Honor Code.
This goes even more so for any pictures you find on the internet. If you copy a picture or any image from a web site and use it in your paper or on your web site without attributing it, that is not only unethical but illegal as a violation of copyright law. Please make clear attributions of any images you copy and try not to go overboard with using too many of them!
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The translation was initiated by Joshua Holden on 11/17/2000