CMPSCI 601: Theory of Computation

Offered through the PEEAS distance learning program

David Mix Barrington

Fall, 2003

This is the home page for the fall 2003 offering of CMPSCI 601. CMPSCI 601 is the graduate core course in the theory of computation and will deal with formal languages, computability, logic, and complexity theory.

This course is being offered only through distance learning by the UMass PEEAS program. Please contact them for any information concerning registration.

Students in the course will be mailed videotapes of the lectures I gave in the Spring 2003 offering of this course. Extensive notes for these lectures are available on the Spring 2003 website. This course was also given by distance learning in summer 2003 and students here may benefit from the problems and solutions posted on the web site for that course. This version of the course will have new homework problems and exam questions.

There will be seven homework assignments, a midterm exam, and a final exam which will determine the grade (35% for best six of seven HW's, 25% midterm, 40% final). See the directory pages linked above for scheduling information.

Announcements (11 December 2003):

I've now posted the HW#7 assignment.
I will try to give the final exam to PEEAS for mailing out to you tomorrow. Please email me and let me know when you would like to take the final (I have heard from two of you already about the 19th.)
One question on HW#6 refers to the complexity class "TC⁰". By this I mean the class called "ThC⁰" in the lecture notes -- languages decided by families of threshold circuits of O(1) depth and polynomial size.
I've decided that HW#7 will be optional and about the same size as HW#6. "Optional" means that I will calculate your HW average with and without it, and use the higher figure.
I have now posted reasonably complete solutions for HW#5, and the long-delayed solutions for HW#3.
At least two students would really like to have the course done with by 19 December, and I'm willing to accomodate that as it's a perfectly reasonable request. In fact I'm fairly flexible, except that I'll be away myself 23-27 December. The final wouldn't touch on the last four lectures anyway. Maybe the thing to do is to make HW#7 optional for those who want to boost their homework grade?
I have posted a half-size HW#6 assignment, due next Wednesday. I plan to have HW#7 due on Wed 17 Dec, with the final exam to be taken during the following week.
The midterm and its solution are now posted.
I've now graded the midterms and am in the middle of emailing individual results. They were actually pretty good --scores in order were 71, 70, 60, 59, 58, 41, and 29. The first two of these are low AB's and the next three are B's. I've also posted the assignment for HW#5, which will be due Wed 5 Dec.
Sorry I've been delinquent in posting here. It's now time for the midterm. I gave PEEAS the exam yesterday and they should have gone out to your proctors today, to arrive sometime between Monday and Wednesday depending on the Veteran's Day holiday. You should take the exam sometime next week (before the end of Friday) and have your proctor fax me your answers. The exam is very similar to the practice and real midterms from the spring version of the course and the midterm from the summer version. You will have two hours for the exam and it is closed-book. Please don't communicate with other students in the course after you take the exam, until Friday when everyone will have taken it.
I've now posted the assignment for HW#4. This consists of twenty questions from the Language, Proof, and Logic text, to be submitted electronically. It is due Wed 5 November. The target time for the midterm is Mon 10 November or Tue 11 November (the former is a holiday in many places).
I've received and answered a number of questions on HW#3 and also fixed a couple more typos.
A student has pointed out a typo in Problem #1 of HW#3, and I've now corrected it.
I've graded the HW#1's and HW#2's, and am emailing individual grade reports to each student as I get the chance. I'll post aggregate statistics when I'm done with that.
One student has asked me for an extension on HW#3 til Monday. As I'm not going to get to grading them over the weekend, I'm going to give everyone an extension until Monday 20 October at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time. I hope to post the HW#4 assignment, which will be from [BE], by tomorrow. You should register your software following the instructions in [BE] to make sure there are no problems.
The HW#2 solutions are posted, except for the last question about a computable total order with a non-computable successor relation. Grading isn't ready yet, sorry.
I've just posted the HW#3 assignment. I hope to have HW#1 and HW#2 graded in the next day or two. The HW#4 assignment will be from the [BE] book, you may want to start looking at that. (I will post it before HW#3 is due.) I may go with only seven total HW's instead of eight. We also need to have a midterm, which will be sometime soon after HW#3 is due.
There are now some questions and answers on HW#2.
I have just posted solutions to HW#1.
I have posted the HW#2 assignment, due a week from Wednesday.
There are now several student questions on HW#1, together with my answers.
Another HW#1 error -- it is due on Wed 24 September, not the nonexistent "Wed 27 Septemeber".
I just corrected an error in the statement of Question 1 on HW#1 -- if you downloaded it before the morning of Fri 12 September, make sure you get this correction.
The PEEAS office will soon email all the students in the course with details on how (at each student's discretion) you may exchange contact information with other students in the course. I encourage you to do this -- I've observed in the on-campus version of the course how much learning takes place in the interaction among the students. Remember, of course, that you are responsible that the work you submit is your own work in presentation -- see the honesty policy on the homework directory page for details.
I have now posted the first homework assignment. It covers lectures 1-4 and is due on Wed 24 September. I will try to post future assignments farther in advance, to allow students to manage their time better. (Due date corrected 12 September.)
The tape shipping schedule is now posted.

Textbooks: First see the textbook notes on the spring 2003 page. It turned out that while the notation of the lecture notes is that of [P], we didn't use [P] all that much and you may or may not want it as a required text. If I assign any homework problems out of [P] I will give their text in full on the web site.

The Sipser book may or may not be useful to you -- it is a very readable treatment of some of the course material.

We will use the LPL book as we did in Spring 2003.

I welcome email questions on the lectures, the homeworks, or any other topics. I will post interesting questions and their answers linked from this page, without identifying the questioner. You may be interested as well in the questions and answers from Spring 2003.

Last modified 11 December 2003