Theory of Computing, Spring 2016

The goal of this course is to acquaint the students with the basic concepts in computation theory and to cultivate the students' ability in analyzing the complexity of computational problems.

• 07/03: grade report available; please send inquiries, if any, to the instructor by 2PM 07/04.
• 06/08: slides from TA sessions: HW#1-2, HW#3-5, HW#6-7, HW#8-10.
• 06/08: HW#10 due on 06/15.
• 05/25: HW#9 due on 06/01.
• 05/25: notes/slides for Time Complexity and NP-Completeness available.
• 05/17: HW#8 due on 05/25.
• 05/17: notes/slides for Reducibility available.
• 05/11: Suggested Solutions to Midterm Problems available.
• 05/04: notes/slides for Decidability available.
• 04/28: HW#7 due on 05/11.
• 04/27: notes/slides for Turing Machines available.
• 04/11: old exams: 2000-2015.
• 04/06: HW#6 due on 04/20.
• 03/23: HW#5 due on 04/06.
• 03/16: HW#4 due on 03/30.
• 03/16: notes/slides for Context-Free Languages and Pushdown Automata available.
• 03/09: HW#3 due on 03/23.
• 03/02: HW#2 due on 03/16.
• 03/02: notes/slides for Finite Automata and Regular Languages available.
• 02/24: HW#1 due on 03/09.
• 02/24: notes/slides for Introduction and Mathematical Preliminaries available.
• 02/17: this website announced.

Yih-Kuen Tsay (蔡益坤), NTU IM Dept., 3366-1189, Xtsay@ntu.edu.twX (between the enclosing pair of X's).

Wednesday 2:20~5:20PM, Room 203, Management Building 2.
TA sessions will be scheduled prior to some of the class meetings between 1:20 and 2:10PM; see the course schedule.

Tuesday 1:30~2:00PM, Wednesday 1:30~2:00PM, or by appointment, Room 1108, Management II.

Hung-Wei Hsu (許宏瑋), 3366-1205, Xr02725048@ntu.edu.twX (between the enclosing pair of X's).

• Introduction to the Theory of Computation, 3rd Edition, Michael Sipser, Cengage Learning, 2012. (歐亞圖書代理)

This is an introductory course to the theory of computation. It covers various mathematical models, including automata and Turing machines, for physical computing machineries along with their computational capabilities/limitations. In terms of specific topics and the order of their exposition, the course will follow closely the book by Sipser.
(Note: a TA session will precede a class meeting whose date is marked with an *. There are four TA sessions on 3/23, 4/6, 5/11, and 6/8, making up the missed class meeting on 4/13.)

• Introduction and Mathematical Preliminaries (2 weeks: 2/24, 3/2) [notes, slides]
• Finite Automata and Regular Languages (3 weeks: 3/9, 3/16, 3/23*) [notes, slides]
• Context-Free Languages and Pushdown Automata (2 weeks: 3/30, 4/6*) [notes,slides]
• Midterm (2016/04/20)
• Turing Machines (2 weeks: 4/27, 5/4) [notes, slides]
• Decidability (and Undecidability) (1 week: 5/11*) [notes, slides]
• Reducibility (2 weeks: 5/18, 5/25) [notes, slides]
• Time Complexity and NP-Completeness (3 weeks: 6/1, 6/8*, 6/15) [notes, slides]
• Final (2016/06/22)

• MIT OpenCourseWare: Automata, Computability, and Complexity
• Stanford Coursera: Automata
• Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation, John E. Hopcroft and Jeffrey D. Ullman, Addison-Wesley, 1979.
• Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation, 3rd Edition, John E. Hopcroft, Rajeev Motwani, and Jeffrey D. Ullman, Addison-Wesley, 2006.
• Elements of the Theory of Computation, 2nd Edition, Harry R. Lewis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, Prentice-Hall, 1998.
• Maillardet's Automaton at the Franklin Institute.
• What Is an Algorithm? (M.Y. Vardi, Communications of the ACM, Volume 55 Issue 3, March 2012)
• What Is Computation? (a lecture by Leslie Lamport, who received the 2013 Turing Award)
• Free Tool: GOAL
• Free Tool: JFLAP

Homework 20%, Participation 10%, Midterm 35%, Final 35%.