Since 2022/23 I have been teaching Math3011 Coding & Cryptography (3rd year undergraduate) at Nottingham.

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The Nottingham course has no formal prerequisites and can be taken by joint honours/natural science students. As such the notes are written to be widely accessible to any mathematics-adjacent undergraduate, requiring only the basics of finite-dimensional vector spaces and modular arithmetic. Even then, the relevant facts from these topics are recalled.

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As a consequence the course, and these notes, are limited in scope. Topics treated include:

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• Introduction to binary error-correcting codes.

• Fundamentals of linear codes and the families of Hamming and Reed-Muller codes.

• Classical symmetric key ciphers.

• Public key cryptography, including digital signatures.

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(Expanded) Lecture notes

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