CS 28000 Introduction to Formal Languages

  • Course Mechanics
  • Course Overview
  • Assignments and Handouts
  • Informal lecture notes
  • Read Ahead

    • Course Mechanics

    Instructor

    Janos Simon
    165 Ryerson
    2-3488
    simon AT cs DOT uchicago DOT edu
    Office Hours: TBA

    Teaching Assistant

    Akiva Leffert


    Office hours: Tue 4:30-5:30

    Textbook

    Dexter Kozen's Automata and Computability contains almost all the material that we will cover. The book is clear, concise, and precise without being pedantic.
    It is, however, a set of lecture notes, not a detailed book. Details are sometimes omitted, proofs sketched, etc. If you feel unsure about your math, you might want to look at the text
    Aho, Motwani and Ullman: Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation: 2nd edition. Addison Wesley. 2001.
    It goes much slower, has detailed and elementary explanations of what proofs are, and so on. It covers more material than we will, but in less depth.

    Course Overview

    Read the first chapter in Kozen, for a quick explanation of what formal languages are and what they are good for.

    I will try to cover in the course

    This is not a rigid scheme. I reserve the right to include interesting topics not in the list, or omit topics.

    Evaluation/Grading

    There will be a midterm, and weekly problem sets. Some of the problems will be challenging. There will also be 'exercises', that you are encouraged to do to help you master the material, but you should not hand in (we will, however, be happy to discuss your solutions.)

    There may be a final--we will discuss it later in the term.

    Class will go at a quick pace. Ask for help if you are lost!

    Assignments and Handouts

    Assignments are due in class the week after they were assigned.

    Assignments given so far.

  • First Assignment. Due Wednesday, October 3.
  • Second Assignment. Due Wednesday, October 10.
  • Third Assignment. Due Wednesday, October 17.
  • Fourth Assignment. Due Wednesday, October 24.
  • Fifth Assignment. Due Wednesday, October 31.
  • Sixth Assignment. Due Wednesday, November 14.
  • Seventh Assignment. Due Wednesday, November 21.
    •

    Digital Handout

    Turing's original paper:
    On Computable Numbers, With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem by Alan Turing. Proc. London Math. Society 2(42) 1936 230-265; "A correction" (id) 43 1937 544-546.

    A short critique of alternative notions of universality The Church-Turing Thesis: Consensus and Opposition" by Martin Davis (LNCS v. 3988)

    Class Content Sketches

    These are mostly notes of what to cover on a given class. They are not lecture notes, and I do not expect them to be completely accurate, except to know roughly what happened at a lecture you missed or dozed through.

    Click here for links to the lectures given so far.

    Please report any mistakes, inaccuracies or other problems with these

    Next lecture

    Click here for a preview of the next lecture. It has the sections of the textbook I plan to cover. Reading ahead may make the lecture clearer. Please note that I am not rigid about what material needs to be covered in a given lecture. Depending on class response, I may slow down, speed up, or cover tangential material, so there is no guarantee that my plans reflect the material that will be actually covered in class.

    http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~simon/