Foundations of CS Theory
VCSG 700
Winter 2005/2006

Instructor - Stanislaw Radziszowski

office bldg. 70B room 3657
(585) 475-5193, spr@cs.rit.edu
http://www.cs.rit.edu/~spr
office hours M 6-7pm, TR 8-9pm, or send email

Lectures

Tuesday/Thursday 2-4pm, room 70-3560

Books

• John C. Martin, Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation, McGraw-Hill, Inc., Third Edition 2003 (required textbook).
• T.A. Sudkamp, Languages and Machines, Addison-Wesley 1988, third edition 2006 (optional).
• H.R. Lewis and C.H. Papadimitriou, Elements of the Theory of Computation, Prentice Hall, second edition 1997 (optional - standard math oriented text).
• J.E. Hopcroft and J.D. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation, Addison-Wesley 1979 (optional - very math oriented). New Edition J.E. Hopcroft, R. Motwani and J.D. Ullman, Addison-Wesley 2001.
• James L. Hein, Theory of Computation, Jones and Bartlett Publ. 1996 (logic oriented).
• J.G. Brookshear, Theory of Computation, Formal Languages, Automata, and Complexity, The Benjamin/Cummings Publ. 1989 (optional - easier).
• J. Carroll and Darrell Long, Theory of Finite Automata with an Introduction to Formal Languages, Prentice Hall 1989 (optional - moderate).

Evaluation

• 45% Homeworks
• 25% Midterm Exam, during class, Thursday, January 26, 2006.
• 30% Final Exam, Tuesday, February 28, 2006, 10:15-12:15, room 70-1610.

Contents

Introduction to the classical and contemporary theory of computation covering regular, context-free and computable (recursive) languages with finite state machines, pushdown automata and Turing machines. Basis of the Chomsky hierarchy and computability theory. Overview of main ideas of Complexity Theory and Computability Theory. There are no programming assignments.