CMPSCI 250: Introduction to Computation

David Mix Barrington

Fall, 2004

CMPSCI 250 Practice Final Exam

Posted Wed 15 December 2004

Actual final will be Mon 20 December 2004

Questions 1 (a) and 3 (a) corrected on 17 December 2004.

There are five questions for 120 total points.

When your answer to a problem is a particular number, you may use exponents, falling exponents, factorials, and/or the "choose" notation to indicate the number. However, if the answer is less than 100, you must give the number in ordinary decimal notation for full credit.

Many of the questions involve the following three regular languages over the alphabet {a,b,c}. The language X is denoted by the regular expression a^*b^*c^*, the language Y is denoted by the regular expression a^*b^*, and the language Z is denoted by the regular expression a^*.

Question 1 (30):

In this problem we will construct, in a roundabout way, a DFA whose language is X.

• (a,5) Using our construction carefully and using the given regular expression, give a λ-NFA whose language is X. Your answer should have ten states and satisfy the rules of the construction. (I originally said "twelve states".)
• (b,5) Give a smaller λ-NFA whose language is X. (The fewer states you have, the easier the remaining parts of this problem will be. It is possible to have only three states.)
• (c,10) Give an ordinary NFA (with only letter moves) whose language is X, built from your answer to (b).
• (d,10) Using the subset construction and your answer to (c) or otherwise, give a DFA whose language is X.

Question 2 (15): These questions involve the language Q = {aⁱb^jc^i+j: i,j ≥ 0}.

• (a,10) Does there exist a DFA whose language is Q? Prove your answer.
• (b,5) Describe (informally) how a Turing machine could be designed to decide whether its input string is in Q.

Question 3 (20): Prove the following statements, carefully explaining your use of quantified proof rules. The languages Y and Z are defined above. The type of variables u, v, and w is "string over {a,b,c}" and the type of the variable n is "natural".

• (a,10) ∃u:∀v:(v∈Y→vu∈(Y-Z)). (The minus sign denotes set subtraction.) (I originally said "(Z-Y)" instead of "(Y-Z)".)
• (b,10) ∀u: (u∈Y)→[∀n:∃v:∃w: (|w|≥n)∧(w∈Y)∧(uv=w)]. (Here |w| denotes the number of letters in w. Hint: Let u be arbitrary and then use induction on n.)

Question 4 (20): This question involves certain boolean statements. For any positive natural n, we define a compound statement P_n using the boolean variables x₁,...,x_n. P₁ is the statement "1" or "true". For n>1, P_n is defined recursively, as P_n-1∧ (x_n-1→x_n).

• (a,10) Prove, using propositional rules or a truth table, that P₃ implies the statement "x₃∨¬x₁".
• (b,10) Prove that for any positive natural n, if P_n is true and x_n is false, then all the variables are false. (Hint: Use induction on n, with care for the base case.)
• (c,15) Let r(n) be the number of settings of the variables x₁,..., x_n that make P_n true. (This is the number of rows in the truth table for P_n that have a one for the entire statement.) Prove that for all positive naturals n, r(n) = n+1.

Question 5 (20): Let f(n) be the number of strings of length n in the language X defined above. Let g(n) be the number of strings of length n in Y, and let h(n) be the number of strings of length n in Z.

• (a,5) Find the value of f(4) and find a general formula for f(n). (Hint: This is a case of one of the four basic counting problems.)
• (b,5) If we choose a string of length n over the alphabet {a,b,c} at random, with all strings being equally likely, what is the probability that the string is in X? What is this value when n=4?
• (c,10) Give a combinatorial proof that for any positive natural n, f(n) = f(n-1) + g(n-1) + h(n-1).

Last modified 17 December 2004