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CS386 Introduction to Automata Theory

Syllabus

Fall 2008

cs386 website: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/vcrespi/CS/CS386/cs386.html
Lectures:

ET-A210, TR 1:30-3:10pm

Final Exam:

Tuesday, December 2, 2008. Time: 1:30-4:00pm

Instructor:

Valentino Crespi
vcrespi@calstatela.edu
(323) 343-4596.
ET-A318

Office Hours:

M 4:00-6:00pm, TR 3:30-4:30pm

Course Description: Formal approach to automata theory; finite state machines, regular expressions, regular languages. Develops mathematical foundation for Computer Science.
Course Goals: At the end of the course, students are able to
  1. Understand and manipulate formal descriptions of languages, automata and grammars with focus on Regular and Context Free Languages, Finite State Automata and Regular Expressions.
  2. Apply rigorously formal mathematical methods to prove properties of languages, grammars and automata.
Prerequisites: MATH248, CS202
Textbook: Peter Linz. An Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata (4th edition). Jones and Burtlett Publishers, 2006.
References:
  1. Arto Salomaa. Computation and Automata. Cambridge University Press.
  2. J. Hopcroft, R. Motwani, J. Ullman. Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation. Addison-Wesley.
Topics: This is a general overview. However you can access the archive to see full logs of previous instances of this same course.
  • Mathematical Preliminaries and Proof Techniques: sets, alphabets, strings, languages, proofs by contradiction and structural induction.
  • Grammars and Automata: language generation and language recognition.
  • DFA and NFA. The Subset construction.
  • Regular Languages and Regular Expressions.
  • Minimization of DFA.
  • Linear Grammars.
  • Pumping Lemma for Regular Languages.
  • Context Free Languages.
  • Parse Trees. Leftmost and rightmost derivations. Ambiguity.
  • PDA and DPDA.
  • Pumping Lemma for Context Free Languages.
Grading Policy: Two Midterm Exams (25%+25%), Final Exam (40%), Homework Assignments (10%)
Score (%) Letter Grade
90-100 A
80-89 B
60-79 C
50-59 D
0-49 F
Academic Integrity: Students are allowed and encouraged to discuss reading materials with each other. However, homework assignments must be solved and written individually. If you obtain a solution with help then you should acknowledge your source in the paper and then write independently your own solution.

Cheating on any exams will not be tolerated.

General Policies:
  • Makeup Exams: No.
  • Use of Cell Phones: forbidden.
  • Office:
    Students are warmly invited to visit the instructor (during the announced office hours) for questions and clarifications.
  • E-mail:
    E-mails addressed to vcrespi@calstatela.edu must have, in the subject, the keyword CS386 (e.g. Subject: CS386 ...). All the E-mails will be possibly processed in the evening and so will be answered with a minimum delay. Be careful, the keyword in the subject is important for automatic filtering. Wrong subjects may result in the accidental loss of the message.