Theory of Computation
CS 7805 Spring 2015

College of Computer and Information Science
Northeastern University

Syllabus

Here is my current plan regarding the material that I would like to cover. It is only approximate and I reserve the right to make modifications based on the interests and background of the class and/or time constraints. The plan was informed by the quiz I gave you the first day. All readings are in Sipser (3rd edition). The number in parentheses next to the date is how many classes we have that week.

Week
Topic
Reading
Jan 12 (2) Introductions
Regular Languages
0, 1
Jan 19 (1) Context-free Languages 2.1-2.2
Jan 26 (2) Context-free Languages 2.3-2.4
Feb 2 (2) Church-Turing Thesis 3
Feb 9 (2) Decidability 4
Feb 16 (1) Reducibility 5.1-5.2
Feb 23 (2) Reducibility
Recursion Theorem
5.3, 6.1
Mar 2 (1) Decidability of logical theories 6.2-6.4
Mar 16 (2) Time Complexity 7.1-7.3
Mar 23 (2) Time Complexity 7.4-7.5
Mar 30 (2) Space Complexity 8.1-8.3
Apr 6 (2) Space Complexity 8.4-8.6
Apr 13 (2) Intractability
Alternation
9.1,10.3
Apr 22 (1) Interactive Proof Systems 10.4