On this page:
CS420:   Intro to Theory of Computation
7.7

CS420: Intro to Theory of Computation

UMass Boston, Spring 2021

image Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:00 -0500

Hi Students,

Welcome to CS420! I am looking forward to the semester.

Please fill out the pre-class survey before the first class (Mon Jan 25).

(Enter your umb.edu credentials into the Google sign-in box to access the survey.)

Remote learning can be tough so this will help me better tailor the course to each of you.

Also, please note that CS 110 and CS 220 are requirements. This means that you must:
  • be familiar with basic concepts in mathematical logic and set theory; and

  • be able to write small programs from scratch (in a language of your choice).

This includes being able to setup a dev environment and write basic build scripts.

In other words, in this class, neither basic math nor programming are themselves the subjects of study, but instead you will use them as tools to study a deeper subject.

(Homework 0 will check and serve as a refresher for these prerequisites.)

See you in the first class!

image

Last updated: Tue, 20 Apr 2021 13:20:35 -0400

Schedule (subject to change):

Lectures meet MW 4-5:15pm via Zoom.

Readings are sections from Sipser, 3rd ed.

#

Date

Topic

Reading

HW out

1

1/25 Mon

Intro to Theory of Computation [slides]

Ch 0

0

2

1/27 Wed

Deterministic Finite Automata (DFAs) [slides]

1.1

3

2/1 Mon

Regular Languages [slides]

1.1

1

4

2/3 Wed

Combining Regular Languages [slides]

1.1

2

5

2/8 Mon

Nondeterminism and NFAs [slides]

1.2

6

2/10 Wed

NFA -> DFA, Reg Exprs [slides]

1.2-1.3

3

no class

2/15 Mon

President’s Day

7

2/17 Wed

More Reg Exprs, Inductive Proofs [slides]

1.3

8

2/22 Mon

More Inductive Proofs, Non-Regular Langs [slides]

1.3-1.4

4

9

2/24 Wed

Pumping Lemma Proof Examples [slides]

1.4

10

3/1 Mon

Context-free Grammars (CFGs) [slides]

2.1

5

11

3/3 Wed

Pushdown Automata (PDA), CFG<->PDA [slides]

2.2

12

3/8 Mon

DCFLS, DPDAs, and Parsing [slides]

2.4

13

3/10 Wed

Non-CFLs; Intro to Turing Machines (TMs) [slides]

2.3,3.1,3.3

6

no class

3/15 Mon

Spring Break

no class

3/17 Wed

Spring Break

14

3/22 Mon

Turing Machine Variants [slides]

3.2,3.3

15

3/24 Wed

Decidability and Regular Langs [slides]

4.1

16

3/29 Mon

Decidability and CFLs [slides]

4.1

7

17

3/31 Wed

Diagonalization and Undecidability [slides]

4.2

18

4/5 Mon

Reducibility and the Halting Problem [slides]

5.1

8

19

4/7 Wed

Mapping Reducibility [slides]

5.3

20

4/12 Mon

Turing Machines and Recursion [slides]

6.1

9

21

4/14 Wed

Intro to Time Complexity [slides]

7.1

no class

4/19 Mon

Patriot’s Day

22

4/21 Wed

Polynomial Time (P) [slides]

7.2

10

23

4/26 Mon

NP [slides]

7.3

24

4/28 Wed

Poly Time Reducibility, NP-Completeness [slides]

7.4

11

25

5/3 Mon

The Cook-Levin Theorem [slides]

7.4,7.5

26

5/5 Wed

HAMPATH is NP-Complete [slides]

7.5

12

27

5/10 Mon

More NP-complete Problems [slides]

7.5

28

5/12 Wed

Recap (last class) [slides]

all