On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 6:02 PM, Ellison Anne Williams < [email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Tim, > > Disclaimer: As a pure mathematician by training, I'm bent towards the > theoretic mathematical explanations of PIR. :) > > PIR has 'historically' (it's only 20 yrs or so old) been a theoretic > discipline which is why you see a theoretic/academic treatment in the > literature. The aim of Pirk is to change this -- to move PIR from the > purely theoretic and into the practical and scalable. > > The Wideskies paper and it's citations are good starting places for > understanding the first base algorithm of Pirk and they do go into all of > the detail. The original Paillier paper is also linked from the website and > it contains some beautiful proofs regarding the hows-and-whys of the > crypto. > > A good basis in abstract algebra (and a cursory bit of number theory) is > necessary to really understand why things work they way that they do here > -- my favorite algebra book is 'Algebra' by Micheal Artin. > > I am working on some slides in which I will explain the Wideskies algorithm > (and some PIR primitives) at a high level, but, honestly, without diving > deeply into the mathematics, folks will mostly have to press the 'I > Believe' button... If we are in the same room at some point, I am happy to > try and walk you through the math. > We could probably plan for a PIR-101 google hangout sometime. Barring Tim (who's in UK), the rest of us I suppose are located in the Washington DC metro. > > Anyone else want to weigh in here? > > Thanks! > > Ellison Anne > > > > On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Tim Ellison <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Could folks recommend some reading material to help me become more > > familiar with the principles behind Pirk's PIR? > > > > Many of the publications I have found on-line are academic reviews > > (information theoretic vs. computational PIR, trading off communication > > and processing complexity, etc), or deep mathematical proofs of > > efficient algorithms (I'm looking at you Wideskies ;-) > > > > I'm prepared to take on trust that the maths can be proven, but I'm > > looking for a bit more than "you send an encrypted query, and we send > > you an encrypted result". I'm looking for the next level of detail. > > > > How do you recommend I learn more about what is happening between the > > various players in Pirk's PIR system? > > > > Regards, > > Tim > > >
