Schedule: CSE 3813 Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata, Spring 2011

For the events and topics listed below, all of the dates are tentative except for the final exam date.  I will adjust this schedule as the semester progresses.

Week Class Dates Events Lecture Topics and Reading Assignments
1 Thu, Jan 6   Class Overview
1.1 Mathematical Preliminaries and Notation
2 Tue, Jan 11   1.2 Three Basic Concepts
Thu, Jan 13 Quiz 1
3 Tue, Jan 18   2.1 Deterministic Finite Acceptors
2.2 Nondeterministic Finite Acceptors
Thu, Jan 20 Quiz 2
4 Tue, Jan 25   2.3 Equivalence of DFAs and NFAs
3.1 Regular Expressions
Thu, Jan 27 Quiz 3
5 Tue, Feb 1   3.2 Connection between REs and RLs
3.3 Regular Grammars
Thu, Feb 3 Quiz 4
6 Tue, Feb 8   4.1 Closure Properties of Regular Languages
Thu, Feb 10 (no class – snow day)
7 Tue, Feb 15 Midterm I
Neil deGrasse Tyson talk*
4.3 Identifying Non-regular Languages
Thu, Feb 17  
8 Tue, Feb 22   5.1 Context-Free Grammars
Thu, Feb 24 Quiz 5
9 Tue, Mar 1   7.1 Nondeterministic Pushdown Automata
Thu, Mar 3  
10 Tue, Mar 8   7.2 PDAs and Context-Free Languages
7.3 DPDAs and DCF Languages
Thu, Mar 10 Quiz 6
  Tue, Mar 15   (Spring Break)
Thu, Mar 17  
11 Tue, Mar 22   9.1 The Standard Turing Machine
9.2 Combining Turing Machines
Thu, Mar 24  
12 Tue, Mar 29   9.3 The Church-Turing Thesis
Thu, Mar 31 Midterm II
13 Tue, Apr 5   10.1 Minor Variations on TMs
10.2 Complex Variations on TMs
Thu, Apr 7 Quiz 7
14 Tue, Apr 12   10.3 Nondeterministic TMs
10.4 The Universal TM
Thu, Apr 14 Quiz 8
15 Tue, Apr 19   11.1 Recursive and Recursively Enumerable Languages
Thu, Apr 21  
16 Mon, Apr 25 Final Exam  12 – 3 pm, Butler 103

*Neil deGrasse Tyson is speaking at 7pm, Feb 15th, in the Coliseum.  If you attend, swipe your student ID card at the door, and I will give you 20 bonus quiz points (this is half of a quiz grade!).  He is a Hearin Distinguished Lecturer, and it should be cool!

Check out A Cool Scientific American paper about Turning Machines (not required reading)

Last Modified: August 06, 2012