Computer Science 320 (Theory of Computation) Winter 2023

Preliminary Version: under construction. All content here is subject to change.

• Syllabus
• Access your CUNY zoom acccount:
• Exams will be in person in SB C203 on the Queens College campus. No make up exams will be given. If you miss the midterm, your final exam score will be used in its place. If you miss the final you will get a WU for the course, or only in the case of good, sufficient and unforeseen reasons you might qualify for an incomplete grade for the course.

• The textbook is Introduction to the Theory of Computation, 3rd edition, by Michael Sipser

  Planned class topics (subject to minor change). Notes and additional detail will be added during and after classes. Homework problems and solutions are selected from a large collection written by Professor Obrenic. Solutions will be available on the next class day.

  • 01-03-23   Class 1:   Sets, products, functions, partial functions, alphabets, strings, N, finite and infinite sets   (Section 0.2 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-04-23   Class 2:   Countable and uncountable sets, countable unions of countable sets, P(N), binary functions on N, R   (Section 4.2 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-05-23   Class 3:   Regular operations, regular expressions   (Section 1.3 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-06-23   Class 4:   Context free grammars, closure properties   (Section 2.1 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-09-23   Class 5:   Finite automata: DFAs, NFAs   (Sections 1.1, 1.2 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-10-23   Class 6:   Kleene's Theorem, closure properties of regular languages, finite automata   (Section 1.3 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-11-23   Class 7:   Pumping lemmas for regular and context free languages   (Sections 1.4 and 2.3 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-12-23   Class 8:   Closure properties of context free languages, Kleene's Theorem, regular grammars, catch up, review.   (Section 1.3 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • Additional Homework for Days 1 to 8   Solutions
  • More midterm review problems
  • 01-13-23       Midterm Exam   Midterm Solutions    
  • 01-17-23   Class 9:   PDAs   (Section 2.2 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-18-23   Class 10:   Turing machines, halting, acceptance, recursive and recursively enumerable languages   (Section 3.1 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-19-23   Class 11:   Simulations, non-determinism, universal Turing machine, the Halting Problem   (Section 3.2 and Chapter 4 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-20-23   Class 12:   Rice's Theorem   (Sections 5.1, 5.2 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • 01-23-23   Class 13:   Algorithms, unsolvable problems, catch up, review   (Chapter 4 of the textbook.)   Notes   Homework   Solutions
  • Additional Homework for Days 1 to 13   Solutions
  • More final review problems
  • 01-24-24       Final Exam   Solutions