COMP 3413 X1 − Fall 2006

Formal Languages, Automata and Computation

 

 

                      Classes:     14:30-16:00 Mon-Wed

                 Classroom:     CAR 113

                  Instructor:     Andrei Gagarin

                         Office:     CAR 411

                       E-Mail:     andrei.gagarin@acadiau.ca

             Office Hours:     15:00-16:00 Tue, 16:00-17:00 Fri

           

Course Webpage:

 

            Some course materials will be available on ACME: http://acme.acadiau.ca

 

Course Objectives:

           

            This course will provide an introduction to the following topics:

ü      Regular languages: finite automata, regular expressions, closure properties;

ü      Context-free languages: context-free grammars, pushdown automata, closure properties;

ü      Turing machines and computability: recursive and recursively enumerable languages, decidability and undecidability;

ü      Elements of computational complexity theory.

 

Textbooks:

 

Required:

J. Hopcroft, R. Motwani, and J. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation, 3rd Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2006.

Secondary references (recommended):

J. Martin, Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computations, 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill (available at the bookstore).

P. Linz, An Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata, 4th Edition, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2006 (will be available at the library).

 

Course Evaluation:

 

            Four Assignments                                 40%

            Midterm                                               20%

            Final Exam                                           40%

           

Academic Integrity

 

Please, read the relevant section of the undergraduate calendar on Academic Integrity. It will be strictly enforced. In particular:

 

·        If you copy a solution to an assignment question, you are guilty of an academic offense. This includes solutions from classmates, the Internet, or textbooks.

·        If you use any unauthorized resources during the midterm or the final exam, you are guilty of an academic offense.

·        If you knowingly help a classmate to cheat, you are guilty of an academic offense.

 

The penalties for cheating are:

 

·        For the first offense: you will receive -100% for the assignment/exam. In addition your mark will be truncated to B (about 70%).

·        For the second offense: you will receive a mark of 0% for the course.