Ben Brostoff’s Feb. 19 column “A novel approach to RSA cryptosystem” bemoaned the existence of midterms as, essentially, boring stuff that has been done before. Why can’t we move on to the super-cool stuff in math and science classes?
Although Brostoff admits that learning fundamentals is key, he still hates midterms, and claims faculty do as well. I politely disagree. Faculty are just dying to see who really masters the fundamentals and aces their midterms (and finals, for that matter.) And if you seek to work on more advanced subjects outside of your coursework, I would bet $100 that you can find a faculty member who will give you some attention.
Any Duke students, Brostoff included, who want to have a serious career tackling scientific problems would do well to master as wide an array of fundamentals as they can, especially programming their own scientific algorithms. I leave Brostoff and any other budding scientists with this little example: In my own research this week, I am wrestling with finding the roots of polynomials. Sounds like fundamentals, right? That’s what most science is: expert application of fundamentals. Keep at it!
Mike Jenista
Graduate student, mathematics
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