CS517

Theory of Computation

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
Instructor: Prasad Tadepalli
Office: 3069 Kelley Engineering Center
Instr. Office Hrs: Tuesday, Friday 9:00-10:00; Other times by appointment
Class Time: MWF 14:00-15:10, Location: Stag 412
email: tadepall AT eecs DOT orst DOT edu
This web page: http://www.EECS.ORST.EDU/~tadepall/cs517/13

Course Contents

  • Catalogue Description: Turing machines, decidability, NP-completeness, complexity classes, randomized computation, relativization, circuit complexity, interactive proof systems, lower bounds, cryptography.
  • Syllabus and Objectives
  • Text: Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach by S. Arora and B. Barak, Cambridge Press, 1'st edition.
  • Reference: The following books are at the valley library reference desk and can be borrowed overnight.
    Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation by Hopcroft, Motwani, and Ullman. An Introduction to Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser, Course Technology.
    Elements of the Theory of Computation by Harry Lewis and Christos Papadimitriou, Prentice Hall.
  • Some Notes and Papers on Selected Topics
      Jeff Erickson's NP-Completeness notes
        Alternation: by A. K. Chandra, D. C. Kozen and L. J. Stockmeyer. Thorems 3.1 and 3.2. imply AP = PSPACE. Theorems 3.3 and 3.4 show APSpace = EXP.
        Prof. Cull's notes on NP-completeness

      Assessment

      Your current scores are here.
    1. Weekly Homeworks (20%)
      1. Homework #1
      2. Homework #2: Due May 1
      3. Homework #3: Due May 20
      4. Homework #4: Due May 31
    2. Quizzes and class room participation (10%)
      Every monday starting April 8'th.
        Quiz #1. Please read upto and including section 1.5 of Chapter 1.
        Quiz #2. Please read Chapter 1 and class notes on recursive and recursively enumerable languages.
  • Midterm (30%)
    Monday May 6, 2 PM. Syllabus: the first 3 chapters in A&B and Undecidability, e.g., in Hopcroft, Motwani and Ullman or in Sipser.
  • Final (40%)
    Friday June 14, 7:30 AM

    Collaborations

    I allow collaborations on homework; but these should be acknowledged (with at most one collaborator) and confined to oral discussion. Any collaboration that requires written communication is forbidden. Everyone should submit their own homework and not collaborate to the degree that the answers are syntactic variants of one another. Of course, you should also not copy answers from books or internet resources unless explicitly asked to do so. Please read the university's academic dishonesty policy for more details.

    Prasad Tadepalli,
    tadepall AT cs DOT orst DOT edu