Introduction to Computer Science Theory

Instructor:   Ivona Bezakova,  ib@cs.rit.edu
Class meets:   Mo/Tu/We/Th   11:00am - 11:50am,   room 70-3455
Office hours:   Tu/We   1:00-3:00pm,  office 70-3645
Tutoring center:   about 20 hours of tutoring per week (follow this link to see the schedule and more information)

0. Homework and Reading Assigments

For information about sections covered in the class, reading and homework assignments, follow this link.

1. Text

Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation, 3rd Edition by John Martin.
This webpage: http://www.cs.rit.edu/~ib/Classes/CSTheory_Fall06/index.html

2. Grading Policy

• Final, 34%.
• Midterms, 30%. There will be 2 midterms, each contributing 15% towards the final grade. The midterms will be in the fourth and seventh week of the quarter, on September 28 and October 19, 11:00-11:50am.
• Homeworks and Discrete Math Quiz, 36%. The discrete math quiz will take place on Thursday, September 7, 11:00-11:30am.
  There will be weekly homeworks, due Thursday 11:00am (on quiz and midterm-free weeks). Out of these 7 homeworks and 1 quiz, the two lowest grades will be dropped and the remaining 6 grades contribute 6% each towards your final grade.

• 1. Underlying mathematical concepts. Languages. Proofs. (Chapters 1 and 2.)
• 2. Regular languages and finite automata. Nondeterminism. Kleene's Theorem. (Chapters 3 and 4.)
• 3. Minimimal finite automata. The pumping lemma for regular languages. (Chapter 5.)
• 4. Regular and context-free grammars. (Chapter 6.)
• 5. Pushdown automata. (Chapter 7.)
• 6. Pumping lemma and other properties of context-free languages. (Chapter 8.)
• 7. Turing machines. (Chapter 9.)
• 8. Recursively enumerable languages. (Chapter 10.)
• 9. Unsolvable problems. (Chapter 11.)
• 10. Introduction to computational complexity. (Chapters 13 and 14.)

• Discussing homework with your fellow students is encouraged. However, after such discussions, all notes must be discarded, blackboards erased, and every student must write up their solutions in private without further consultations with your classmates or any written material other than your notes, the textbook or this webpage. For every problem discussed with other students, state their names and briefly sketch the extent of your discussions (e.g. "solved together", or "clarified problem statement").
• All homeworks are due on Thursdays, 11:00am. No late submissions will be tolerated. I will stop answering homework related e-mails on Wednesday, 4:30pm. You will have a week to complete each homework and the assignments will be handed out and posted on the webpage on Thursdays.
• Exams are closed book, closed notes. For every exam you may prepare one one-sided letter-size hand-written "summary sheet" (no photocopies).
• Homework or exam grade can be disputed within one week after the graded work is handed back. Dispute the grade with the instructor, not the grader.
• The discrete math quiz cannot be made up. The midterms and the final cannot be made up unless a true emergency arises (a proper documentation is required in such cases).
• Hopefully there is no need to link to the departmental policy on academic dishonesty. In the unfortunate event when cheating earns a 0 score on a homework, the two lowest non-cheating scores will be dropped.