10.2 Factoring
It is hard to do a web search and find “practical” applications of factoring integers. Many results say things such as “factoring integers is a tool for factoring polynomials” and “factoring integers is useful for solving some differential equations.” These examples are fine, but it seems like math to do more math. factoring integer$factoring
One area where factoring comes into play is cryptography. Some cryptographic protocols assume you cannot easily factor some large numbers because those factors are related to encryption and decryption methods. Shor, Peter algorithm$Shor’s factoring Shor’s factoring algorithm
In this section, we examine several classical methods for factoring. Although they involve some sophisticated mathematics, they are currently insufficient for breaking arbitrary large integers into their prime components. This discussion sets us up for the final section of this chapter...
