Comp. Sci. 601 Syllabus Spring, 2008

CMPSCI 601: Office Hours, Spring 2008
Neil Immerman, CompSci Bldg 374, immerman@cs.umass.edu Mon. 2:30 - 3:30, Tues. 1:30 - 2:30, and by appointment.
Philipp Weis, CompSci Bldg 314, pweis@cs.umass.edu by appointment

Optional Discussion Section: New this year, instead of his regular office hours, Philipp will lead a weekly discussion section on Mondays from 12:30 to 1:30, CompSci Bldg 140. These will be used to give pointers on how to solve 601-type-problems and to answer any questions about the assigned problems and the course material. The first discussion section will be Monday, January 28. The first few weeks, Philipp will use part of this time to help you with your review of regular sets and context-free languages.

If some of the symbols that I have been using seem Greek to you, here is a Symbol Table to help you remember what they mean.

Questions and Answers

Please do the indicated readings from the text and handouts BEFORE coming to class. I'll try to put the lecture notes up a day or so before each class, but for most people these will be most useful to go through after the relevant class. The lecture notes are often missing many details. I continue to attempt to improve them. Please let me know of any questions, typos, etc.

Date Lecture Readings to be Completed Before Class
M, 1/28 1. Introduction plus Finite Automata Review § 1; Computability and Complexity entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
W, 1/302. Myhill-Nerode Theorem Review [HMU], [LP], or [S] as needed
M, 2/43. Context-Free Languages Review [HMU], [LP], or [S] as needed
W, 2/64. Turing Machines § 2.1 - 2.3, fyi: excellent, mathematically correct review of a recent Turing biography; HW 1 due
M, 2/115. More Turing Machines § 2.4 - 2.7; current descriptive world
W, 2/13 Class cancelled due to snow day HW 2 due; please hand in to main office before 5 pm today.
Tues, 2/19 6. Busy Beaver, Universal TM and Halting § 3.1 - 3.2; fyi: Hopcroft article on TMs
W, 2/20 7. Recursively Enumerable Sets HW 3 due: § 3.3
M, 2/258. Undecidability of a CFL Problem
W, 2/279. Primitive Recursive Functions HW 4 due; see bloop1.rb, bloop2.rb; and Computability and Complexity entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; current descriptive world
F, 2/29
Extra class, usual Time, room 142		10. Boolean Logic § 4;
M, 3/311. First-Order Logic § 5.1 - 5.2
W, 3/512. Tarski's Definition of Truth § 5.3; HW 5 due
M, 3/1013. FO Axioms, Soundness Thm, Meta Thms § 5.4
W, 3/12 First Evening Test, 7:30 -- 9:30 pm ELAB 323; Study Guide for First Test
3/17 -- 3/21Spring Break
M, 3/2414. Completeness and Compactness Theorems § 5.5, 5.6;
W, 3/2615. Gödel's Incompleteness TheoremHW 6 due; § 6.1 - 6.3; Gödel's Paper; current descriptive world
M, 3/31 16. Complexity Classes and Hierarchies § 7.1 - 7.2; current descriptive world
W, 4/2 17. Savitch and Immerman-Szelepcsényi Theorems § 7.3; HW 7 due
Tu, 4/7 18. Fagin and Cook Theorems § 8.1 - 8.3; current descriptive world
W, 4/9 19. NP Completeness § 9; HW 8 due
M, 4/14 20. Alternation Alternation article; §16.2;
W, 4/16 21. Parallelism and Circuit Complexity § 15.1 - 15.3; current descriptive world; HW 9 due
W, 4/23 22. PSPACE § 19; current descriptive world;
M, 4/28 23. Ladner's Theorem and Random Computation § 11.1 - 11.2, 15.4, fyi: PRIME is in P, Sym-L = L, First-Order Isomorphism Theorem
W, 4/30 24. Approximability of NP Optimization Problems HW 10 due; § 13
M, 5/5 25. Summary and Conclusions
W, 5/7 Second Evening Test, 7:30 -- 9:30 pm LGRC A301; Study Guide for Second Test; three optional logic problems, not for handing in
M, 5/12 26. Arthur-Merlin Games, Interactive Proofs, and Shamir's Theorem § 12