

Alan Turing: The Applications of Probability to Cryptography [pdf] - Fede_V
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.04714v1.pdf

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stygiansonic
Great text - from the document, they were apparently both written during WWII
and declassified "recently" \- as far as I can tell, roughly three years
ago.[0]

The editors have taken the original manuscripts and made them more
presentable. In their own words:

 _" It is not our intent to cast Alan Turing’s manuscripts into a journal
style article, but more to provide clearer access to his writing and, perhaps,
to answer the questions “If Turing had have had access to typesetting
software, what would his paper have looked like?”"_ So consider this to be
"Alan Turing meets LaTeX".

Some interesting quotes:

 _" For instance if it is known the 20% of men live to the age of 70, then
knowing of Hitler only Hitler is a man we can say that the probability of
Hitler living to the age of 70 is 0.2. Suppose that we know that Hitler is now
of age 52 the probability will be quite different, say 0.5, because 50% of men
of 52 live to 70."_

 _" Suppose that one man in five dies of heart failure, and that of the men
who die of heart failure two in three die in their beds, but of men who die
from other causes only one in four die in their bed, but of the men who die
from other causes only one in four dies in their beds. (My facts are no doubt
hopelessly inaccurate)."_

 _" Straightforward Cryptographic Problems"_: This is a chapter heading that
precedes the cryptanalysis of the Vigenere cipher, demonstrating the use of
probability theories to the cryptanalytic methods used, among other things.
There are over 20 pages dedicated to this. (Perhaps straightforward to someone
with a background in the topic, but I still got a kick out of the title)

0\.
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/23/turing_papers_releas...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/23/turing_papers_released/)

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jedberg
Last night I finally got to watch "The Imitation Game". I was already familiar
with Turing and his life, but that movie really solidified with me how
terribly he was treated despite the fact that he was responsible for saving so
many lives.

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mgalka
It is incredible how far ahead of his time he was on so many things.

I wonder how much further along our technology would be if his life had not
been cut short.

