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CS 520: INTRO TO THE THEORY OF COMPUTING TR 9:30-10:45AM CS&S 1207 Spring 2008 |
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Course info
Lectures
Homeworks
Exams
Contact
UW CS
Theory Group
- 04/23. Tomorrow (4/24) I will hold office hours from 11 a.m. to noon, and not at the usual time (4-5).
- 04/07. This week Baris will not hold office hours on Monday (i.e. today). Instead, he will be available on Wednesday from 4:30 to 5:30 PM at the usual place CS&S 1304.
- 04/03. HW4 and HW3 solutions are available now. See below.
- 03/05. HW2 solutions are available now. See below.
- 02/26. Starting tomorrow Baris will hold his Friday office hours from 1:30 - 2:30 PM, and not 4:30 - 5:30 PM as before.
- 02/26. I distributed graded HW1 in class today. If you didn't get yours back, please feel free to collect it from my office during my office hours.
- 02/20. The solutions to HW1 are up now. See below.
- 02/05. The midterm will be held on Tuesday March 11 at 7:15 PM, and will (tentatively) be two hours long. Please mark your calendars. We will announce the venue shortly.
- 02/05. Homework 1 is up now (see below). It is due in two weeks at the beginning of class.
- 01/31. Shuchi's office hours today will be from 3-4 PM, instead of from 4-5 PM, as there is a talk from 4-5 in the CS department. The schedule for the following weeks remains unchanged.
- 01/03. Our first lecture will be on Thursday, Jan 24 at 9:30 AM in room 1207 in the CS&S building. The Jan 22 lecture is cancelled.
- 01/03. Welcome! Please check this space frequently for announcements. More information about the syllabus, instructor, course work, etc. can be found here.
- Midterm Mar 11 7:15 - 9:15 PM CS 1257
- Final May 15 7:45 - 9:45 AM CS 1207
Announcements
Course Description
This course provides an undergraduate-level introduction to the theory of computing. The objective is two-fold: first, gaining an understanding of the nature of computation, its capabilities and its limitations, and obtaining the ability to reason rigorously about them; second, acquiring the mathematical foundation for applications of these insights in other areas of computer science. Read more ...
Lecture schedule & handouts
| Date | Title | Handouts | Readings |
| Jan 24 | Lec 1: Introduction, Finite Automata | Fact Sheet | § 0, § 1.1 |
| Jan 29 | Lec 2: Regular languages, regular operations | § 1.1, §1.2 | |
| Jan 31 | Lec 3: Non-determinism | §1.2, §1.3 | |
| Feb 5 | Lec 4: Non-determinism, regular expressions | HW1 | §1.2, §1.3 |
| Feb 7 | Lec 5: regular expressions (contd.), non-regular languages, Pumping lemma | §1.3, §1.4 | |
| Feb 12 | Lec 6: Pumping lemma, State minimization in finite automata | Lec 6 handout | §1.4, Lec 6 handout |
| Feb 14 | Lec 7: State minimization, Turing machines | Lec 7 handout | Lec 6 & 7 handouts, §3.1 |
| Feb 19 | Lec 8: Turing machines, Church-Turing thesis | HW2 | §3.1, §3.3 |
| Feb 21 | Lec 9: Non-deterministic TMs, Multi-tape TMs | Sol1 | §3.2, §3.3 |
| Feb 26 | Lec 10: Non-determinism (contd.), Decidability | §3.2, §4.1 | |
| Feb 28 | Lec 11: Undecidability | §4.1, §4.2 | |
| Mar 4 | Lec 12: The halting problem, Reductions | §4.2, §5.1 | |
| Mar 6 | Lec 13: Reductions (contd.) | Sol2, Sample midterm | §5.1, §5.3 |
| Mar 10 | Midterm review at 4:30 p.m. in CS 1207 | Sample midterm solutions | |
| Mar 11 | No lecture; Midterm at 7:15 p.m. in CS 1257 | ||
| Mar 13 | Lec 14: Rice's theorem, Post's correspondence problem | HW3 | §5.1, §5.2 |
| Mar 25 | Lec 15: Post's correspondence problem (contd.) | §5.2 | |
| Mar 27 | Lec 16: Time complexity, the class P | §7.1, §7.2 | |
| Apr 1 | Lec 17: The class NP | §7.2, §7.3 | |
| Apr 3 | Lec 18: NP Completeness, Satisfiability | HW4, Sol3 | §7.4 |
| Apr 8 | Lec 19: NP Completeness (contd.), Cook-Levin Theorem | §7.4, §7.5 | |
| Apr 10 | Lec 20: NP Completeness (contd.) | §7.4, §7.5 | |
| Apr 15 | Lec 21: CoNP, Coping with NP-Hardness | §7.5, §10.1 | |
| Apr 17 | Lec 22: Space complexity, Savitch's theorem, PSPACE | HW5, Sol4 | §8.1, §8.2 |
| Apr 22 | Lec 23: PSPACE-Completeness | §8.3, §8.4 | |
| Apr 24 | Lec 24: PSPACE-Completeness (contd.), L, NL | §8.4, §8.5 | |
| Apr 29 | Lec 25: L, NL (contd.) | §8.4, §8.5, §8.6 | |
| May 1 | Lec 26: Randomness in Computation | §10.2 | |
| May 6 | Lec 27: Interactive Proofs, Zero Knowledge Proofs | Handout | Handout 13.1, 13.2 |
| May 8 | Lec 28: Cryptography based on computational hardness | Handout | Handout 13.3, 13.4 |
Homeworks
(Note: Solutions are no longer available online; Hard copies are available outside Shuchi's office; Alternately, please email Shuchi for a copy.)
Exams
We will have two exams: