Coding and Languages

Resources for the day

Q: Why did Mary Queen of Scots lose her head?
A: Because her secret code was deciphered by Queen Elizabeth I's spymaster, Francis Walsingham, and his codebreaker, Thomas Phelippes
Q: What's this got to do with languages?
A: Languages can be seen as a form of coding.  The principles which Francis Walsingham used can be used to determine which language a coded message is in, and to find out more about the characteristics of that language.

Mathematical topics we will use during the day include problem-solving and data-handling:

• working out how many different possible keys there are for different types of codes
• seeing how techniques such as frequency analysis make an impossible problem possible
• considering how well coded data on the internet is protected
• using graphs to help us display data
• using graphs to characterise different languages
• solving numerical clues to find keywords in various languages which will point to the identity of an Enigmatic Character

Resources for the day

Plan for the day

• Session 1: the history of codes
  • Scytale strips (this needs to be printed out in advance, and individual strips cut for each student)
• Session 2: analysing languages
  • sets of passages in French, Spanish, German and English should be made up in advance (I suggest four passages per language for students to work on in groups, including perhaps texts from novels, text books, newspaper articles, websites, poetry, plays, ...).  Actual content is unimportant, what matters is that they have a range of different texts to analyse.  I suggest at least 500 words per text.
  • frequency analysis spreadsheet
  • student worksheet
  • teacher notes
  • website with frequency analysis tool (this could be used to facilitate counting the occurrences of each letter in the texts, if texts are available in electronic form)
• Session 3: who is the Enigmatic Character?
  • student worksheet 1
  • student worksheet 2
  • student worksheet 3
  • student worksheet 4