Hacker Math

Hacker Math

This is mostly fun... not too important, but it's fun to make your brain work hard.

We don't need to know crazy math to be good hackers, as we saw with the crypto section, we can lean on other people's existing programs to get us where we need to go.

However, there are a few "mathy" ideas that are good to know outside of crypto.

Conditional Probability and Monty Hall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

This is often in CTF challenges and is really hard to wrap your head around. The first time I found it my friends and I basically stopped working for 3 hours and yelled that wasn't how the real world works.

Alas, it does.

Birthday Paradox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

Compounding

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/compoundinterest.asp

Amdahl's Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

Curse of Dimensionality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality

Survivorship Bias

a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#In_the_military" target="_blank"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#In_the_military</a>

You don't need to memorize any of these, but it is good to know what they are so you can spot them.

For your assignment, explain Monty Hall in your own words.