CS301 Foundations of Computer Science Spring 2002 Department of Computer Science

Contents (links to sections on this page)

• What's New?
• Weekly Schedule and Assignments (separate page)
• Password-protected Information
• Course Description
• Time and Place
• Instructors and Graduate Teaching Assistants
• Text Books
• Grading
• On-Line Resources

What's New?

April 29: For Assignment 10, the programming assignment, exercise 2 is not required, but can be done for extra credit.

April 25: An example makefile has been added to the Assignment 10 description (near the end). See the On-Line Resources for CS253 for more help with makefiles.

April 24: Assignment 12 has been posted. Exercise 16 was included in class, but it is no longer part of this assignment.

to Contents

Course Description

In this class you will learn how to study computation, not in terms of semiconductors and integrated circuits, but in terms of abstract models of computation. The investigation of what these models of computation can and cannot do leads us to a theoretical understanding of the fundamentals of computation. The tools we will use include formal languages, finite state automata, pushdown automata, turing machines, and methods for measuring the complexity of algorithms. Prerequisites for this course are CS200, CS/M201 or CS/M166, M161, M229.

to Contents

Time and Place

to Contents

Instructors

Instructor: Chuck Anderson

• E-mail: anderson@cs.colostate.edu
• Phone: 970-491-7491. FAX: 970-491-2466
• Office: 225 USC. Office Hours: Mondays and Thursdays, 2:00 PM - 4:00, or by appointment (send e-mail or call)

Graduate Teaching Assistant: Devon Simmonds

• E-mail: simmonds@cs.colostate.edu
• Office: Cubical E6, South end of USC 2nd floor.
• Phone: 970-491-6275
• Office Hours: Wednesdays, 6 PM - 10 PM, South Lab, 3rd floor USC, or send e-mail for appointment

to Contents

Text Books

• Required:
  • Languages and Machines: An Introduction to the Theory of Computer Science, second edition, by Thomas A. Sudkamp, published by Addison-Wesley, 1997. Click on the title to see the errata list.
• Suggested supplementary books to help with CS301 material:
  • Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation, by Hopcroft and Ullman, published by Addison Wesley
  • Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, by Rosen, published by McGraw-Hill.
  • Discrete Algorithmic Mathematics, 2nd Ed., by Maurer and Ralston, A.K. Peters, Ltd., Natick MA, 1998.

to Contents

Grading

For homework exercises, you will have two chances to get the correct answers. For this we will follow the following policy. You must turn in your assignment by the due date and time. You will receive your graded assignment within one week. From the day that we return the graded homework to the class, you will have one additional week to fix your errors. After one week, you must turn in your corrected version and the original, graded version. You will only get credit for the exercises which you attempt to answer on your original version. For example, if you answer only the first half of the exercises for a particular assignment, and provide answers for all exercises in your second attempt, you will only get credit for the first half of the exercises. So, it is very important that you attempt to answer all questions for first hand-in.

Be sure you read the Computer Science Department's Student Information Sheet. It explains the department's policies regarding late assignments and other important things.

to Contents

On-Line Resources

Pumping Lemma

• Explanation by David Matuszek
• Nine Errors Students Commonly Make When Applying the Pumping Lemma,

Regular Expressions

• How to Test Your Regular Expression, code and instructions for testing regular expressions on unix.
• A Tao of Regular Expressions, by Steve Mansour,
• Regular Expressions in JavaScript,
• Java and Regular Expressions,
• Regular Expressions tutorial and examples

Susan Rodger at Duke University

      ~cs301/jflap/run

      ~cs301/jflap/run -tm ~cs301/jflap/examples/class-ss.TM