time: Tues/Thurs 10:00am - 11:30am
place: Sci 217
level: advanced
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