Course info
Lectures
Homeworks
Exams
Contact
UW CS
Theory Group
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Announcements
- 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.
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
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Title
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Handouts
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Readings
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Jan 24
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Lec 1: Introduction, Finite Automata
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Fact Sheet
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§ 0, § 1.1
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Jan 29
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Lec 2: Regular languages, regular operations
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§ 1.1, §1.2
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Jan 31
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Lec 3: Non-determinism
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§1.2, §1.3
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Feb 5
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Lec 4: Non-determinism, regular expressions
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HW1
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§1.2, §1.3
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Feb 7
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Lec 5: regular expressions (contd.), non-regular languages, Pumping lemma
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§1.3, §1.4
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Feb 12
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Lec 6: Pumping lemma, State minimization in finite automata
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Lec 6 handout
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§1.4, Lec 6 handout
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Feb 14
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Lec 7: State minimization, Turing machines
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Lec 7 handout
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Lec 6 & 7 handouts, §3.1
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Feb 19
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Lec 8: Turing machines, Church-Turing thesis
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HW2
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§3.1, §3.3
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Feb 21
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Lec 9: Non-deterministic TMs, Multi-tape TMs
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Sol1
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§3.2, §3.3
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Feb 26
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Lec 10: Non-determinism (contd.), Decidability
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§3.2, §4.1
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Feb 28
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Lec 11: Undecidability
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§4.1, §4.2
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Mar 4
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Lec 12: The halting problem, Reductions
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§4.2, §5.1
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Mar 6
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Lec 13: Reductions (contd.)
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Sol2, Sample midterm
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§5.1, §5.3
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Mar 10
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Midterm review at 4:30 p.m. in CS 1207
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Sample midterm solutions
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Mar 11
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No lecture; Midterm at 7:15 p.m. in CS 1257
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|
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Mar 13
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Lec 14: Rice's theorem, Post's correspondence problem
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HW3
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§5.1, §5.2
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Mar 25
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Lec 15: Post's correspondence problem (contd.)
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§5.2
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Mar 27
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Lec 16: Time complexity, the class P
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§7.1, §7.2
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Apr 1
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Lec 17: The class NP
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§7.2, §7.3
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Apr 3
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Lec 18: NP Completeness, Satisfiability
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HW4, Sol3
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§7.4
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Apr 8
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Lec 19: NP Completeness (contd.), Cook-Levin Theorem
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§7.4, §7.5
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Apr 10
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Lec 20: NP Completeness (contd.)
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§7.4, §7.5
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Apr 15
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Lec 21: CoNP, Coping with NP-Hardness
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§7.5, §10.1
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Apr 17
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Lec 22: Space complexity, Savitch's theorem, PSPACE
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HW5, Sol4
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§8.1, §8.2
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Apr 22
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Lec 23: PSPACE-Completeness
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§8.3, §8.4
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Apr 24
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Lec 24: PSPACE-Completeness (contd.), L, NL
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§8.4, §8.5
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Apr 29
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Lec 25: L, NL (contd.)
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§8.4, §8.5, §8.6
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May 1
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Lec 26: Randomness in Computation
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§10.2
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May 6
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Lec 27: Interactive Proofs, Zero Knowledge Proofs
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Handout
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Handout 13.1, 13.2
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May 8
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Lec 28: Cryptography based on computational hardness
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Handout
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Handout 13.3, 13.4
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Homeworks
(Note: Solutions are no longer available online; Hard copies are available outside Shuchi's office; Alternately, please email Shuchi for a copy.)
- HW1 [PDF]
- HW2 [PDF]
- HW3 [PDF]
- HW4 [PDF]
- HW5 [PDF]
Exams
We will have two exams:
- Midterm Mar 11 7:15 - 9:15 PM CS 1257
- Final May 15 7:45 - 9:45 AM CS 1207
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