A Few Words in Figures

OK, so here's the presentation from Sunday. Of course, as I'm not a "read from the board" kind of guy, it'll seem a little sparse. And it was, for the most part, as I spent about 20 minutes on the "Who is John Brown, Jr.?" slide alone. I told stories about him going insane in Kansas,* recounted the Pottawatomie Massacre, and explained how the newspapers thought he was raising a couple regiments of black cavalry to invade Virginia all by himself. Sorry I can't provide notes, as I didn't use any.**

However, once you get into the actual decipherment, it will move along much more quickly.*** In fact, by the time it's done it'll seem so simple you'll wonder what all the fuss is about. As do I.

If you'd like a couple letters to practice on, you can find them here and here and here and here and here and here.

* Most of the audience grasped that concept surprisingly easily.
** I suppose I could tell my jokes, but I'm afraid they would not be as funny as they weren't in person.
***and it will seem like I cheat. For example, one slide says "If 16 is 'E'," and it just magically fits the pattern.  I actually explained at that point that I had done a frequency analysis on the numbers, and the most common one was 16. So it made sense to "guess" that it was E. What I didn't explain is that I didn't understand the purpose of '00' until late in the process, after I had figured out E and A and I.  E was actually the first key, not the last straw.