Homepage for CSCE 551
Theory of Computation
Spring 2012

This page is subject to update through the term. It was last modified on Apr 13, 2012.

Time: TTh 2:00-3:15pm
Place: 300 Main St., B112
Syllabus

Textbooks: 

Lecture Slides


Date
Topics
Slides       
01/10/12
Mathematical background I: sets and sequences, functions and relations, graphs (Ch. 0.1-0.2)
Lecture 1
01/12/12
Mathematical background II: languages, proof techniques (Ch. 0.2-0.4)
Lecture 2
01/17/12
DFA, State diagrams, Regular languages (Ch. 1.1)
Lecture 3
01/19/12
NFA, Equivalence of DFAs and NFAs (Ch. 1.2)
Lecture 4
01/24/12
Regular Expressions, Equivalence of GNFAs and NFAs (Ch. 1.3) Lecture 5
01/26/12
Nonregular Languages, Pumping Lemma (Ch. 1.4) Lecture 6
01/31/12
Practical session
n/a
02/02/12
Context-free grammars, Parse Trees, Ambiguity, Chomsky normal form (Ch. 2.1)
Lecture 7
02/07/12
Pushdown Automata, Equivalence of PDAs and CFGs (Ch. 2.2) Lecture 8
02/09/12
Pumping Lemma for CFL, Non-context-free languages (Ch. 2.3) Lecture 9
02/14/12
Turing Machines, Deciders and Recognizers, Variants of Turing Machines (Ch. 3.1-3.2) Lecture 10
02/16/12
Algorithms, Church-Turing thesis (Ch. 3.3). Review session of part I. Lecture 11
02/21/12
Midterm 1
n/a
02/23/12
Decidable Languages (Ch. 4.1). Review of Midterm 1. Lecture 12
02/28/12
Halting Problem, Undecidable Languages (Ch. 4.2) Lecture 13
03/01/12
Reducibility (Ch. 5.1) Lecture 14
03/13/12
Reducibility via Computation Histories (Ch. 5.1)
Lecture 15
03/15/12
Post Correspondence Problem (Ch. 5.2)
Lecture 16
03/20/12
Computable Functions, Mapping Reducibility (Ch. 5.3) Lecture 17
03/22/12
Time Complexity (Ch. 7.1) Lecture 18
03/27/12
Review session
n/a
03/29/12
Midterm 2
n/a
04/03/12
The class P (Ch. 7.2) (see also slides 13-24 on Dynamic Programming) Lecture 19
04/05/12
The class NP (Ch. 7.3)
Lecture 20
04/10/12
NO CLASS
n/a
04/12/12
NP-completeness, Polynomial Time Reducibility Lecture 21
04/13/12
Review of Midterm 2
n/a
04/17/12
NO CLASS
n/a
04/19/12
Review of Homework 3 and Part III n/a
05/02/12
Final Exam
n/a


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Homeworks

Graduate students do homeworks for full credit, but undergrads may do them as well for extra credit. It is encouraged that textual part of solutions is typed and printed rather than handwritten.

Supporting Materials

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