16.1, due on November 22

1. (Difficult) Thinking about polynomials like those in this chapter is not intuitive for me.  I see a lot of letters and numbers, but I have a hard time visualizing or immediately understanding what's going on.  Fortunately, it seems like the math, as presented in this section, is mostly things I have seen before.
2. (Reflective) It seems like elliptic curves have been important lately in cryptography, and will likely continue to be.  I wonder if understanding them is within the reach of someone with as little math training as I've had, or if it really takes more prerequisites.  I know I can't understand everything about elliptic curve cryptography, but if I could understand an application of it as well as I do RSA (which I also don't understand perfectly), I'd be pleased.