Foundations of CS Theory
CSCI-661-01, Spring 2024, Term 2235

Instructor

Stanisław Radziszowski

building 70, room 3657, (585) 475-5193
spr@cs.rit.edu, https://www.cs.rit.edu/~spr
office hours: TuTh 6:30pm-8pm in person, or via zoom (must prearrange), or email spr@cs.rit.edu any time

Lectures

Tuesday/Thursday 5:00pm-6:15pm, room 70-3435

Books

• M. Sipser, Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Cengage Learning, third edition 2013, required textbook. Errata to various editions.
• John C. Martin, Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation, McGraw-Hill, fourth edition 2010, optional textbook.
• J.E. Hopcroft and J.D. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation, Addison-Wesley 1979, optional (math oriented, classics). Third edition, J.E. Hopcroft, R. Motwani and J.D. Ullman, Addison-Wesley 2007.

Evaluation

• 42% Homeworks
• 20% Midterm Exam, Thursday, March 7, 2024, 5pm-6:15pm, room 70-3435.
• 26% Final Exam, Thursday, May 2, 2024, 7pm-9:30pm, room 70-3435.
• 12% Class participation

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.

Schedule

Done so far in Spring 2024
• Overview, discrete mathematics:
  lect1.pdf, lect2.pdf (week 1)
• Regular languages:
  lect3.pdf lect4.pdf lect5.pdf lect6.pdf (weeks 2-3)
  lect7.pdf lect8.pdf lect9.pdf lect10.pdf (week 4)
  lect11.pdf lect12.pdf (week 5)
  lect13.pdf lect14.pdf (week 6, 2/20-22)
  
• Context-free languages:
  lect15.pdf lect16.pdf lect17.pdf (week 7)
  Week 8: 3/5 class, 3/7 midterm
  lect18.pdf lect19.pdf lect20.pdf (week 9)
  lect21.pdf PDA->CFG.pdf lect22.pdf (week 10)
• Church thesis, what can be computed?
  lect23.pdf lect24.pdf lect25.pdf (week 11)
  
• Decidability, solvability, computability, recursive functions
  lect26.pdf lect27.pdf lect28.pdf (week 12)
  

To do. Done in Spring 2023

• Complexity, P=NP?
  lect29.pdf lect30.pdf lect31.pdf (weeks 13-14)
  

Tutoring

Extra help, both in-person and on zoom, is available at the Tutoring Center.

Policies

All general RIT Educational Policies apply to this course.
All common CS course policies also apply. Ask when in doubt.