Talk:Alice and Bob/Draft

But what about Ted and Carol?

"Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" is the first thing that comes to mind when I see this. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Date of birth?

Do you know when (approximately?) Alice and Bob first appeared? Could they be immigrants from game theory?

As for the additional characters: Were they present in the first edition, too? If so, then this edition should be cited as the "origin" of the names. (If you do not know, I probably can check it.)

--Peter Schmitt 12:11, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't have the 1st edition of AC.

The biography we link to is from a 1984 conference on coding theory. Alice & Bob were not new then; Gordon mentions "some longstanding traditional reason" for the names and says "there are hundreds of papers about Alice and Bob". The original RSA paper, 1978, uses Alice & Bob. Beyond that, I've no idea of their birthdate, or for that matter, their parentage. Sandy Harris 10:07, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The WP article [1] and a Network World story they link to say the origin is the RSA paper. Sandy Harris 10:12, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I added a link to the Network World story and text that follows them in attributing the names to Rivest. Sandy Harris 01:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Comparing to WP

The Wikipedia article [2] has a far longer list of names, most of which I do not think we need. I did add a sentence about creating additional characters as needed.

I wonder about their additions, Arthur & Merlin or Paul & Carole, related to interactive proof systems. I do not know enough about those systems to know if we should add them. Sandy Harris 01:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I added them, partly by copying WP text. What, if anything, needs to be done about attribution?

Grammarians, including Chomsky but I do not know if it originated with him, often use John & Mary. I find such examples strange. To me, Mary was my first wife & John is her second husband. Sandy Harris 00:09, 13 August 2010 (UTC)