ECS 120 – Theory of Computation

ECS 120 – Theory of Computation – Spring 2014

Cover image from
Introduction to Formal Language Theory (1978)
by Prof. Michael Harrison (UCB)

This page last updated
6/18/2014 at 4:30 am

Announcements

Finals have been graded and class grades assigned. Despite people finishing the final so early, it certainly spread the class out: the median was 57%, with a range of 4%-93% and pretty much everything in between. Here’s a histogram for you (by percentage; the exam was graded out of 175). Overall, I felt that this was a pretty strong class, this term, and assigned 20% A’s (of some flavor) and 31% B’s (of some form).
Have a fun and productive summer. I hope to see at least a few of you in ECS 188 next Winter (about as different a class from ECS 120 as two class in a single department could be). It’s been my pleasure teaching you this term.

Kind regards,
phil rogaway

General Information

Lectures to date will grow with each lecture – also shows the date of all exams
Course information sheet – please read it – you are responsible for everything on it
Spring 2013 lectures and Fall 2012 videos.
Readings: Sipser: Chapter 0, 1, 2.1-2.3, 3, 4, 5, 7.
Instructor: Phillip Rogaway – 3009 Kemper – please see my homepage for my office hours
TAs hold office hours in 55 Kemper
M 1:10-2: Theo, ttpan@ucdavis.edu
M 2:10-3: Harika, hhsabbella@ucdavis.edu
T 10:30-12:30: James, yzhangad@gmail.com
R 10:30-12:30, 1:10-3: James, yzhangad@gmail.com
SmartSite Forum, Facebook discussion group, and SmartSite chat room (deprecated)

Problem Sets

PS1 and PS1 Soln
PS2 and PS2 Soln
PS3 and PS3 Soln
PS4 and PS4 Soln
PS5 and PS5 Soln
PS6 and PS6 Soln
PS7 and PS7 Soln (Contest winers: JiannanC; and JohnC, OlegI, DeanL; both with 27 rules)
PS8 and PS8 Soln
PS9 and PS9 Soln
PS10 and PS10 Soln

Exams

Miscellaneous

Practice final (1995) (please do this exam in advance of the review session)
Practice final (2004)
Rice’s Theorem
My own sloppy lecture notes
Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know (Brewster, 1912) - A children’s book that Alan Turing liked
Turing’s 1936 paper that defines what we now call Turing machines (no solution available)
Sample LaTeX file and the pdf it yields
Some comments on my grading
Automata course (free, coursera), by Jeff Ullman (Stanford). Course contents similar to our own.
Myhill-Nerode writeups from Wikipedia, Dan Gusfield, Hogberg and Larsson, Slind.
A writeup of Hopcroft’s O(n lg n) algorithm for DFA minimization (Timo Knuutila, 2001)
Do Waterfalls Play Chess? (Antonio Porreca’s summary of) Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity by Scott Aaronson