Schedule

A rigid schedule is not conducive to effective learning, since it would limit our flexibility in exploring ideas as they arise in class. The actual schedule (both the timing and the selection of topics) will be determined by in-class interactions.

At the beginning and end of each class, I typically announce the topics and textbook sections covered in that class and those due at the next class. It is important that students read the material before the class in which it is discussed and, in general, keep up with readings and studies.





Monday

Wednesday

Friday




January 17th

 ×No class. MLK Jr. Day; semester begins next day.

19th     C1

Preliminaries. §§ 0.*.

21st     C2

Introduction; recursion theorem (informal). §§ 0.*, 6.1.




24th     C3

Finite-state automata (FSAs). § 1.1.

26th     C4

Non-determinism (FSAs). § 1.2.

28th     C5

Regular expressions (regexes). § 1.3.




31st     C6

Equivalence of regexes and FSAs. § 1.3.

February 2nd     C7

Catch-up; review.

4th

 Quiz 1




7th     C8

Nonregular languages. § 1.4.

9th     C9

Context-free grammars (CFGs). § 2.{0, 1}.

11th     C10

Pushdown automata (PDAs). § 2.2.




14th     C11

CFGs and PDAs. § 2.{2, 3}.

16th     C12

Catch-up; review.

18th

 Midterm Exam 1




21st

 ×No class. Presidents’ Day.

23rd     C13

Non-context-free languages. § 2.3.

25th     C14

Special topic; catch-up; review.




28th     C15

Turing Machines. § 3.1.

March 2nd     C16

Turing Machine variants. § 3.2.

4th     C17

Church-Turing Thesis. § 3.3.




7th     C18

Decidability. § 4.{0, 1}.

9th     C19

Catch-up; review.

11th

 Quiz 2




14th

 ×No class. Spring break Mar. 14–20.

16th

 ×No class. Spring break Mar. 14–20.

18th

 ×No class. Spring break Mar. 14–20.




21st     C20

Undecidability. § 4.2.

23rd     C21

Reducibility. § 5.1.

25th     C22

Post Correspondence Problem (PCP). § 5.2.




28th     C23

Catch-up; review.

30th     C24

Mapping reducibility. § 5.3.

April 1st     C25

Time complexity basics and the class P. §§ 7.{0, 1, 2}.




4th     C26

The class P; CYK algorithm. § 7.2.

6th     C27

Catch-up and review.

8th

 Midterm Exam 2




11th     C28

The class NP. § 7.3.

13th     C29

NP-completeness. § 7.4.

15th     C30

NP-complete problems. § 7.5.




18th     C31

Space complexity; Savitch’s Thm.; PSPACE completeness. §§8.1–8.3.

20th     C32

Classes L and NL. §§ 8.4–8.5.

22nd     C33

Synthesis and review.




25th     C34

Synthesis and review.

27th

 ×No class. Maine Day.

29th     C35

Synthesis and review.




May 2nd

 ×No class.  Final exam: May. 2, 10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

4th

 ×No class. Finals week May. 2–6.

6th

 ×No class. Check Univ. schedule for final exams.




Figure 1: Approximate schedule, likely to change. Textbook items are in §§ chapter.section format.