Comp. Sci. 601 Syllabus Spring, 2011

CMPSCI 601: Office Hours, Spring 2011
Neil Immerman, CompSci Bldg 374, immerman@cs.umass.edu M 3-4, Tu 3-4, and by appointment.

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

Errata that you have found so far in Arora and Barak text

Please do the following:
  1. as soon as possible please send me an email introducing yourself including
    1. what you like to be called;
    2. what your background (if any) is with finite automata, context-free languages, Turing machines, algorithms, complexity theory;
    3. any topics you are especially hoping we will cover, or ones you'd rather skip;
    4. any other issues.

  2. please read:
    1. the Hopcroft article on Turing Machines that I handed out;
    2. take a look at the slides on Turing Machines from Lecture 4, 2009.
    3. Chapters 0 and 1 of [AB]. Please send me any typos that you find in the text. We'll compile a list for the authors, thanks!

  3. To understand the material on Turing Machines and Recursive Function Theory through Monday, Jan 31, please read the following slides: Busy Beaver, Universal TM and Halting and Recursively Enumerable Sets.

  4. Here is HW 1, which was to be due in class Wednesday, Feb. 2, but is now due Monday, Feb 7, because Feb. 2 is a snow day. Please have Chapter 2 of [AB] read by then as well, and as usual send me any typos you find.

  5. Mon. Feb. 7: NP Completeness

  6. Wed. Feb 9: Fagin and Cook Theorems

  7. Here is HW 2, due in class Wednesday, Feb. 16. As usual send me any typos you find.

  8. Wed. Feb 16: Intro to Complexity

  9. Tue. Feb 22: Space Complexity and Space Hierarchy Theorem; please read Chapter 4 of [AB]: Space Complexity.

  10. Wed. Feb 23: Savitch and Immerman-Szelepcsényi Theorems

  11. Here is HW 3, due in class Wednesday, Mar 2. As usual, please send me any typos you find.

  12. Mon. Feb 28 and Wed. Mar 2: Alternation; please read Chapter 5 of [AB].

  13. Mon. Mar 7: PSPACE

  14. Wed. Mar 9: the Polynomial-Time Hierarchy

  15. Mon, Mar 28: Finite Automata Review

  16. Wed, Mar 30: Parallelism and Circuit Complexity

  17. For hw5, see Context-Free Languages.

  18. Wed, Apr 20: Random Computation

  19. Mon, Apr 25: Arthur-Merlin Games and Interactive Proofs

  20. Wed, Apr 27: Shamir's Theorem: IP[nO(1)] = PSPACE

  21. Mon, May 2: Summary. [This is from Spring 2009, so feel free to ignore the logic and the primitive recursive functions.]

  22. The final exam is scheduled for Thursday, May 5, 10:30 a.m., in Computer Science 140.