16.4, due on December 6

1. (Difficult) It turns out combining two already difficult concepts (elliptic curves and finite fields) doesn't make things a lot easier.  This section to me though, wasn't actually all that bad compared to the others on elliptic curves, but I am having some trouble understanding in general.  I am a confused for both elliptic curves mod 2 and with finite fields adding points.  For both we have to look at adding three points and having them equal infinity.  While if I tried really hard to follow the math, it may be possible, I don't know if I have enough intuition to think of the approach.
2. (Reflective) Lightly reading over the sections we have in the chapter so far leads me to believe that modern cryptography is a rather sophisticated area of mathematics, and isn't really approachable for a computer scientist without much mathematics background.  I think courses like 485 are very helpful to CS students in helping them understand somewhat of what is going on in cryptography, but in order to contribute to the field, it seems like some more background math courses would be helpful.  I think there's other courses in the math department that would help make elliptic curves and finite fields more intuitive.