COMPSCI 250: Spring 2023

Syllabus and Course Schedule

Prof. David Mix Barrington and Ghazaleh Parvini

Reading assignments are from Barrington: A Mathematical Foundation for Computer Science (draft), available in two parts. The book is an e-book available for $60 from Kendall Hunt Publishing.

Lectures are MWF. Section 01 (Dave) has lectures 12:20-1:10 PM in Goessmann 64. Section 02 (Ghazaleh) has lectures 10:10-11:00 PM, also in Goessmann 64. There are eight discussion sections (four serving each lecture), each meeting on Fridays. Section 01AA meets at 10:10 in Hasbrouck 124, Section 01AB meets at 1:25 in ELAB 323, Section 01AC meets at 11:15 in Goessmann 20, Section 01AD meets at 11:15 in Morill 2 Room 222, Section 02AA meets at 9:05 in Marston 211, Section 02AB meets at 1:25 in Hasbrouck 134, Section 02AC meets at 12:20 in Hasbrouck 126, and Section 02AD meets at 11:15 in ILC S110.

There are two evening exams to be scheduled on 23 March and 25 April, and two discussion sections are cancelled to compensate for the extra time.

The six homework assignments are due at dates that will be given below.

The weekly quizzes will be each Tuesday, due at 8:00 p.m., except for 7 February, 14 February, 21 March, and 18 April.

PART I: Logic and Number Theory

Mon 06 Feb L01  Sets and Strings (1.1, 1.2)
Wed 08 Beb L02  Propositions and Boolean Operations (1.4)
Fri 10 Feb D01  What is a Proof? (1.3)  
Fri 10 Feb L03  Set Operations and Truth Tables (1.5, 1.6)
Mon 13 Feb L04  Rules for Propositional Proofs (1.7) (END OF ADD/DROP) 
Wed 15 Feb L05  Propositional Proof Strategies (1.8)
Fri 17 Feb D02  A Murder Mystery (1.9)   
Fri 17 Feb L06  Predicates and Relations (1.10, 2.1)
Mon 20 Feb ---  NO CLASS (Presidents' Day Holiday)
Wed 22 Feb L07  Quantifiers and Languages (2.3, 2.5) (MONDAY)
Fri 24 Feb D03  Translating Quantifiers (2.4)
Fri 24 Feb L08  Proofs With Quantifiers (2.6)
Fri 24 Feb H01  Homework #1 due at 11:59 p.m. 
Mon 27 Feb L09  Relations and Functions (2.8)
Wed 01 Mar L10  Equivalence Relations (2.10)
Fri 03 Mar D04  Practicing Proofs (2.7)  
Fri 03 Mar L11  Partial Orders (2.11)
Mon 06 Mar L12  Divisibility and Primes (3.1)
Wed 08 Mar L13  Modular Arithmetic (3.3) 
Fri 10 Mar D05  Infinitely Many Primes (3.4)
Fri 10 Mar L14  The Chinese Remainder Theorem (3.5)
Fri 10 Mar H02  Homework #2 due at 11:59 p.m.

SPRING BREAK
   
Mon 20 Mar L15  The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic (3.6)
Thu 23 Mar X01  FIRST MIDTERM (7-9 p.m., room TBA) on Lectures 1-15

PART II: Induction, Trees, and Searching

Wed 22 Mar L16  Recursive Definition (4.1)
Fri 24 Mar ---  NO DISCUSSION (makeup for exam) 
Fri 24 Mar L17  Proof by Induction for Naturals (4.3)
Mon 27 Mar L18  Variations on Induction for Naturals (4.4)
Wed 29 Mar L19  Proving the Basic Facts of Arithmetic (4.6) 
Fri 31 Mar D06  Practicing Induction Proofs (not in book)
Fri 31 Mar L20  Recursive Definition for Strings (4.7)
Fri 31 Mar H03  Homework #3 due at 11:59 p.m.
Mon 03 Apr L21  Induction for Problem Solving (4.11)
Wed 05 Apr L22  Graphs, Paths, and Trees (4.9, 9.1)
Fri 07 Apr D07  More Induction Practice (not in book)
Fri 07 Apr L23  Recursion on Trees (9.3)
Mon 10 Apr L24  General, Breadth-First, and Depth-First Search (9.4, 9.5)
Mon 10 Apr ---  Last Day to Drop With W or Elect Pass/Fail  
Wed 12 Apr L25  BFS and DFS on Graphs (9.6)
Fri 14 Apr D08  Boolean Expression Trees (9.2)
Fri 14 Apr L26  Uniform-Cost and A* Search (9.8, 9.9)
Mon 17 Apr ---  NO CLASS (Patriots' Day Holiday)
Wed 19 Apr L27  Games and Adversary Search (9.10)
Fri 21 Apr H04  Homework #4 due at 11:59 p.m.  
Tue 25 Apr X02  SECOND MIDTERM (7-9 p.m., room TBA) on Lectures 16-27

PART III: Regular Expressions, Finite-State Machines, and Computability

Fri 21 Apr ---  NO DISCUSSION (makeup for exam)  
Fri 21 Apr L28  Regular Expressions and Their Languages (5.1, 5.2)
Mon 24 Apr L29  Proving Regular Language Identities (5.4)  
Wed 26 Apr L30  Proving Properties of the Regular Languages (5.5)
Fri 28 Apr L31  What DFA's Can and Can't Do (14.1, 14.2)
Fri 28 Apr D09  Designing Regular Expressions (5.3)
Mon 01 May L32  The Myhill-Nerode Theorem (14.3)
Wed 03 May H05  Homework #5 due at 11:59 p.m.  
Wed 03 May L33  NFA's and the Subset Construction (14.5, 14.6)
Fri 05 May D10  State Minimization (14.3, adapted)
Fri 05 May L34  Killing λ-moves: λ-NFA's to NFA's (14.7)
Mon 08 May L35  Constructing NFA's from Regular Expressions (14.8)
Wed 10 May L36  State Elimination: NFA's to Regular Expressions (14.10)
Fri 12 May D11  Practicing Some Kleene Constructions (14.9, adapted)   
Fri 12 May L37  Two-Way Automata and Turing Machines (15.1, 15.6)
Mon 15 May L38  Turing Machine Semantics (15.8)
Wed 17 May L39  The Halting Problem and Unsolvability (15.10)
Wed 17 May H06  Homework #6 due at 11:59 p.m.

Final Exam (cumulative), Wed 24 May, 8:00-10:00 a.m., Totman Gym

Last modified 12 April 2023