Fall 2019

# syllabus

time:     Tues/Thurs 10:00am - 11:30am
place:    Sci 217
credits:  4
faculty:  Jim Mahoney & Matt Ollis
text:     Introduction to the Theory of Computation, 2nd Edition,
Michael Sipser, ISBN 8131501620
e.g. http://www.amazon.com/dp/8131501620


A mathematical introduction to the theory of computation. Topics include automata such as Turing machines, formal languages such as context-free grammar, and computability questions as described by "NP-complete" problems and Godel's incompleteness theorem. This is an upper-level course that presents the foundations of theoretical computer science. Expect practice with lots of mathematical proofs, with programming examples to build intuition. Prerequisite: Formal mathematics and programming experience

Here is an approximate schedule. The interests and abilities of the class may steer us in a different direction; we'll see.

 1     math and programming preliminaries
2     finite automata
3     regular languages
4     context-free grammars
5     pushdown automata
6     Turing machines
7     what is an algorithm
8     decidable languages
9     the halting problem
10     reducibility
11     P and NP
12     NP-completeness
13     course round-up


## 31 Oct Plan

• Week -5: Chapter 7: P vs NP.
• Week -4: Philosophy of Mind and 6.1, 6.2 and 6.4.
• Week -3: 10.1, 10.2 and 10.5 and maybe 10.4.
• Weeks -2 and -1: Individual choice.
https://cs.marlboro.college /cours /fall2019 /formal_languages /syllabus